Twin Trouble
by PersianWitch
Summary: Happens during Starfighter:Eclipse - Helios and Selene are already on Kepler, but before their mission on Derelict. CC stated that Kepler needs help and sent an additional squad of reinforcement under Commander Faraday. Why is Cain distrubed by that? How will it affect Helios, still infatuated with Abel? And how Selene is going to bear with those who came unexpectedly?
1. Chapter 1

**Witch: ugh yeah, sorry guys. It's not anything from the stories that I SHOULD be finishing and I know it's horrible of me, but I really couldn't help myself from making this story. I promise I'm going back to "Please, help me forget" and "Slave Master" as soon as I finish this one, okay? I'm planning it as a three shot, so it shouldn't take that long.**

 **Chapter unbeated, so please, forgive me for the mistakes!**

 **I hope you'll enjoy it :)  
**

* * *

Helios was just finishing his routines of one hundered push-ups, when sudden commotion in the corridor near gym made him interested.

He grabbed his shirt from a chair and followed other fighters, who were already crwoding in the entrance. Noises coming from there were getting more and more violent, from usual threats into undistinguishable animalistic growls. Helios sighed, annoyed, as he recognized one of the fighting guys' voice.

"One more time and you'll..."

"Fuck you, ya colony bastard...!"

There was more struggling and the two apparently hit the wall more than once with all the thudding noise that was going on. Since Helios couldn't elbow his way through the crowd, he resigned and started dressing, completely loosing interest. Not that arguing between fighters was something unusual or strange, but even though he understood all that testosterone going around, he still found Cain's antics over 'protecting' his Navi from others quite childlish.

"He's mine, ya shit!"

"Oh yeah?!"

More thudding noises and screaming. Cringing, Helios took his jacket and decided it was high time for him to leave the gym, since he wouldn't be able to do any more of his training with that fight near. Cain will probably see it fit to run through the area and smash everything into the other guy's head, preferably with him being still alive. And that was something Helios didn't want to watch and actually did't have time to. He had VR training scheduled with his Navigator and he didn't want to be late.

He was just stepping out of the door through back entrance, when another voice could be heard in the crowd of cat-calls and cheering.

"Cain, no! Stop it!"

Helios was the one who stopped dead in his tracks, apparently opposite to Cain, as he must have got punched in the face, judging by his enraged shouting. Helios turned on his heel and started to peel away people from thick crowd in his way in direction of distressed voice of Abel. He didn't know why, but his cries made him want to rip Cain to pieces and sprinkle salt on every little part.

Helios has been coincidently meeting Abel for a while now, usually with Cain by his side, who was a jealous jackass and rude prick. In opposition to his sweet Navi, the fighter made Helios' skin crawl with angry retorts to his growling threats, while they both were bristling like two mad dogs over one cute puppy. Helios couldn't understand what Abel saw in that idiot, but it was irritating him nonetheless that otherwise intelligent person could have such a bad taste. Cain didn't know how to appreciate someone as good as Abel and if that was someone else... if it was him, he would...

Helios' train of thought was interrupted, because he was now near the center of things and could see how two fighters pushed Abel back and away, making him hit the wall with his arm with small cry of pain. That was the moment, when Helios, adrenaline-pumped from training, started seeing red.

However, before he could swing his arm and join the two assaulters that were now tangled in barking heap on the ground, some huge hands caught him by his shoulder and he heard husky voice commanding him.

"That's it, break it up ladies! Come on, break it up!"

Helios' vision was back to normal as soon as Encke threw Cain at him to overpower, taking the other guy for himself. In a matter of seconds the fighting ring was quiet and subdued, as all fighters were staring at the Lead Fighter with awe and some kind of literarily scared respect. Helios barely had time to compose himself, while his hands worked and otheir own and took possession of Cain's arms. Cain was in such a state that he was able to haul himself at Encke and as much as Helios knew his strenght, he would end up getting sent to Med Bay. If he was lucky.

"Listen up, you idiots! You know full well that we're in the space and might be attacked anytime. You should be ready to fight the enemy not each other! Anyone who starts a fight from this moment is going to be thrown down the brig and I'll probably forget about them for the rest of the flight. Any of you bastards wanna try me?"

In the silence that followed, Encke finally let go of the fighter he was holding by the throat. The guy slid bonelessly to the floor, but Encke didn't even as much as look at him. He just started walking into direction of exit and the crowd split into two part before him, as if the fighters wanted to dissapear from his sight.

Cain, as if petrified until Encke was present, suddenly came back to life, finding himself in tight grip of Helios.

"Let go, fuck-"

"No, don't!" Abel came running from his corner, somehow slipping through the other fighters and kneeling in front of Cain. He took his fighter's face in hands and gripped it, so that Cain wouldn't turn around.

"Cain, look at me! No, come on... why did you do that? I told you I'm alright, you didn't have to... I'm really fine, why did you..."

"Erm... Abel?" Helios decided it was the best moment to interrupt that emotional moment, especially because he was still holding Cain down. "Everybody's watchin' so maybe you'll take it somewhere else?"

He released Cain from his grip, helping him up, but Cain must have been beaten more than he would admit, because he staggered heavily at the wall. Abel took his shoulder and swung it over his without a word. Nodding his fair head at Helios in thanks, they limped together into the corridor leading to joined bunks. Helios tried real hard to fight back pangs of jealousy that appeared in his mind, but he couldn't. He still didn't understand what Abel liked about such a douche like Cain, but well... not that he could do anything. If he could judge from the look that Abel was giving his fighter, the case was hopeless.

Realizing that if he ran, he would only be few minutes late for training with his Navi, Helios rushed to the exit opposite to the one Abel dissapeared with his injured lover.

/

When this day ended, Helios was half-dead. He lied on his bunk, with his arm over his eyes and groaned from muscle pain.

"Are you alright?" gentle voice inquired and a silouette covered electric light. "Do you need something?"

"It's okay Selene." Helios mumbled with his eyes still closed. "I'mma just tired like hell."

Soft chuckling told him that his navigator is in high spirits even if equally drained like him.

"No wonder." admitted Selene and Helios could hear him doing something by the desk as the drawer was opened and closed. "You worked very hard today and it amazed me how... strong you are." he said, hesitating a little. If Helios wouldn't be so exhausted, he would certainly be interested in seeing his navigator blushing red in dim lightening of their bunk. But right now, he was not aware of any turmoil going on in Selene's head and completely oblivious to his tries to change the atmosphere. He just wanted to sleep so badly... he heard Selene saying something more and his brain registered it as important, but his eyes were hurting, his body was hurting and his head was so heavy, even lying down...

"...and I was wondering if we are really compatible... I mean, we do well during the VR training and all, but... Helios?" Selene noticed that from where his fighter was, he could hear quiet regular snoring. He sighed tiredly, a little dejected.

"You're asleep, huh? Not that I can blame you." he said to himself, brushing hair that fell on his face. For a moment he looked as if he was wondering about something, but finally his shoulders slumped and he rubbed his eyes in tired gesture.

"I just hope... I just hope you'll notice me someday..." he whispered, leaving a careful kiss on Helios' mouth. Then, he climbed into his own bed and fell asleep even before his head touched the pillow.

/

Alarm clock rang too early for Helios' poor head. He grimaced, half-asleep and tried to block the sound with his pillow, when his brain woke up with a scream: it wasn't an alarm clock! It's a ship's alarm!

Jumping right away to his feet, still kind of sleepy, Helios knocked over Selene, who wanted to wake him up, apparently worried that he wasn't already up yet. The navigator lost his footing and would fall down if Helios didn't react quicker, fully awake now. He caught Selene into his arms and holding him tightly to himself, sunk to the floor to regain their balance.

"Sorry." Helios rasped into Selene's ear, his voice hoarse from sleeping. "What's going on?"

"I don't know!" Selene had to try real hard to hide his emberassement, but before he came up with a way to not blush more, they could hear a sound of dostant explosion and the ship tilted violently to one side. Alarm became even more urgent than previously.

" _All personnel to the away ships in Dock 256! We are under attack! This is not a drill! I repeat: all personnel to the away ships in Dock 256! We are under attack!"_

The speakers were barking orders one after another, but Selene couldn't find strenght to move – he was being hugged closely to the body of someone spent just a week with, but that someone was everything he wished for...

"Ow." said Helios, letting go of Selene with one hand and massaging his scalp. "must have hit something hard." he added with a smile, looking down at his navigator. He could see that Selene was gripping his shirt tightly, as if afraid to let go and he found it rather strange, since the other shouldn't be afraid of explosions, right? Helios moved the hand that he was keeping on Selene's neck to pretect it from any shaking that could follow.

"Hey, Selene, you okay?" he asked, feeling on his skin that the navi was trembling slightly. "Let's go, we may be needed."

He helped Selene to get up from the floor and still holding his hand, directed them out of the bunk and into the hangar, where majority of other fighters and navigators off-duty were gathering. On huge monitors they could see the alien ships creating damage in the Kepler and appearing ships of the defense. Also, orders of the commander could be heard through the intercom.

" _Blue Team advance! Red team, stay behind to guard repair mechs!"_

"Whoa." It was Helios' first observation of real-time fight, because he didn't count in all that VR training. It was totally different and he wondered shortly how would it feel to be up there, with his ship and fight the Colterons that were mercilessly ripping through the Keplers defences. As much as he wasn't a tactic person, even he could see that Blue and Red teams were up to their necks in trouble, being attacked from every side. He was just wondering if it wasn't the high time for the commander to mobilize the off-shift personnel, when the intercom cracked and some other transmission was launched.

" _This is Captain Chronos of reinforcements team calling Commander Hayden of Kepler. Captain Chronos calling Commander Hayden. Please, respond."_

"Commander Hayden speaking." came in barking voice of the officer. "State your position Captain Chronos."

" _We can see Kepler being attacked. My ships are joining the fight and I want you to warn your people of friendly fire, sir."_

"Captain Chronos, we don't see..."

The moment the commander said that, radars on the bridge jingled together, signalling new participants in the brawl. From where Helios could see, a squadron of about ten ships or more was quickly advancing from the side to take the Colterons in crossfire together with Blue team. The crowd could hear that Commander Hayden was shouting instructions for the Red team to leave the newcomers alone, as they were reinforcements of some sorts and apparently were sent to help. Helios wondered shortly about how did they manage to have such a good timing, but that was a problem that could be solved later, since right now, both teams somehow managed to surround the enemy and force them to retreat.

A loud cheer hit the hangar.

" _This is captain Chronos, come in Kepler. Asking for permission to access the ship."_

"We can hear you captain Chronos. Permission granted."

Helios gripped tighter Selene's hand.

"Hey, let's go see who's that!" he shouted, walking forward cheerfully, with his navigator trailing after him, still confused, blushing and feeling as if his hand in Helios' was of fire.

/

Because Cain was always first when something was going on and Abel was on duty on the bridge when the attack came, they both managed to be relatively quick in getting to the arrival hangar. The crowd that observed the fight started to gather here too, as all crew was curious about the newcomers, so it took some effort of Abel and close to none for Cain to work their way through other people. When they finally found themselves by railing on a gallery, all new teams were standind at attention before commander Hayden. The hangar fell into silence, when evebody waited for Captain Chronos to appear.

"Chronos... Chronos... rings a fucking bell." muttered Cain, hanging from Abel's arms in a very intimate way. "Where did I..."

"Shh!" Abel tried to make him quiet, his eyes curiously jumping from pair to pair. "It's starting."

From the group, neatly divided into Fighters and Navigators in rather unique uniforms, came forth a very tall man. Abel and Cain weren't that far from the landing point, so from what Abel could tell, the captain was... he was...

"Captain Chronos along with reinforcement squad under my command report for duty, Commander Hayden, sir." his voice was strong and loud, Abel was sure that whole hangar heard him perfectly. He had a small smile on his lips, a little ironic, but saluted the commander with every proper manner. And those lips... _oh my god_ , thought Abel, _does such a man really exist?_ Abel knew that men could be handsome or not, but this particular man couldn't be described as anything else, but... beautiful.

"I don't remember sending for help, captain." Commander Hayden's voice was cold, when he looked at the new guy up and down. Chronos saluted again, still with his strange little smile.

"We were sent from CC as a result of some higher-up analysing your battle percentage, sir." he said simply, giving an impression as if he wanted to be helpful. "They decided that you meet Colterons too often for your own good, so they've sent us and our commander to be a temporary help, should such a situation occur. Sir."

"Commander?" Hayden caught this phrase with furred eyebrows. "Who is your commander and why isn't he here?"

Abel couldn't see all that well, constantly being pushed and shoved aside by the other viewers, but he could swear that for a split of second Captain Chronos had an expression as if he wanted to attack Commander Hayden. But it must have been an illusion from lightening in the hanger, because when Abel blinked, captain was still standing, unmoved, before the CO.

"Our Commander is Commander Faraday." he said and his beautiful face brightened with a really charming smile. Behind Abel, Cain sharply took in a breath and then seemed to have stopped breathing at all. "Some urgent matters stopped our Commander from coming here directly, but they shouldn't take long."

"How long?"

"No more than a week-"

Abel couldn't hear anything more, because Cain erupted into quiet string of curses and forcibly turned Abel around to look in his face.

"Ow, what're you doing?!"

"Listen." Cain barked, holding his navigator by his shoulders. Abel could feel his hands gripping so tightly that he would surely end up with a lot of bruises. "You are under no circumstances to get close to this Chronos guy! Understood?"

Abel blinked in surprise.

"What? Why?!"

"Because I know him! He's a total psycho! And belongs to Faraday's Suicide Squad, the ones who went into Colterons' part of territory and came back as loonies!"

"You know his commander?" asked Abel, gently untangling Cain's fingers from his already hurting shoulders. His fighter was always impatient and a fireball, but right now he was pale and looked really disturbed. That alone made Abel wonder in what situation Cain must have met captain Chronos.

" 'I know' is sayin' too much." Cain shrugged, composing himself a little. He let Abel turn around to face the hangar again, then leaned on him as usual and continued talking. "Never saw 'im, just heard about 'im. A sadist and total nut. Rotation in his unit is highest from all and not from injuries, but clear deaths. When joining his squad, people say that you're already in a coffin, if you're lucky enough to have your body intact when you die. That's why they got a nickname 'suicidal'."

"That's... awful." Abel cringed, looking at captain Chronos' face in new light now. Maybe there was something in what Cain said, because now he could see in captain's beautiful features signs of cruelty frozen into his expressions. Well, that's a pity, because Abel really felt that he could spend a pleasant hour or so on just watching this incredibly beautiful person. Right now however, not only Cain prohibited him from even coming close to Chronos, but Abel himself assert that didn't want to do it anymore. He wasn't first to believe Cain's usually baseless suspicions, but something in the captain's face made him wonder. And shudder.

Abel shrugged indifferently, watching as Chronos was giving orders to his men. Actually men and women, as he could see that some of the navigators wore different uniforms and had long hair plus very delicate features. And as he was voyageing through their lines, one person made him twitch in surprise. He caught Cain's hand.

"Hey, isn't that Selene? What's he doing there?"

"Who the fuck's Selene?"

"Oh, Cain." Abel sighed with frustration at how dense his fighter could be. "Helios' navigator, remember?"

"The one with doll face?"

"If you want to say it like that." Abel made a face. "Look, isn't it him? The one at the end on the right?"

Cain hanged out of the railing to see better.

"Seems so." he said. "So?"

"Aren't you interested in what he is doing among the new reinforcements when he was assigned to Kepler a week ago?" Abel asked, clicking quickly on his pager. Ignoring Cain, he observed closely Selene standing below and talking with unknown fighters. Seconds later the pager chimed and Abel hissed.

"Whoa."

"Wazzup?"

"I mailed Selene where is he and he says he and Helios got stuck in the bridge." said Abel slowly, taping in another message. Then, not looking back at Cain, who barked "wha-?", Abel ran downstairs.

/

There were still many people not going into the hangar and when Keeler ordered Selene to stay and do some work, Helios decided he would stay too. Right now he was watching his navigator hitting the keyboard in frustration.

"Problems?" he asked with a smile. Frustrated Selene was blushing slightly, as if he felt personally offended that the machine didn't want to cooperate.

"Rather lack of information." Selene said, gritting his teeth. He was told to write a report on the new crew and right then he got to know that almost all data about them was restricted. Trying to make some sense from it, he ran himself in a deadlock. "It's not a glitch. I just don't see, how can I-"

Pager on his belt chimed melodically. Still focusing on blockades on his screen, Selene reached for it and flipped open little monitor.

"Huh?"

"Something wrong?" Helios got up from his seat seeing that his navigator paled in record time. Selene's eyes, those always calm and warm eyes widened first in surprise, then in fright, still looking at pager's screen. Blindly, he outstretched his hand, in search for support and that was when Helios decided he had to step it. He took Selene's hand and made him meet his own eyes.

"What happened?" he asked gently, not wanting to create any chaos on the brigde, where navigators were walking here and there, absorbed in their tasks. Noone had to see Selene like that. "You know you can tell me, right?"

"Yes... yes." Selene was clearly disturbed, his eyes looking at the fighter, but not seeing him at all, lost in his thoughts, deep in his mind. Finally, Selene shook his head violently and bolted from his chair, running at top speed right away.

Of course, such behaviour from usually composed navigator immediately made other people wonder and gossip, espacially those who were run over by hurrying Selene. But he didn't stop even when Keeler appeared from behind his desk and shouted after him to come back. Ignoring an order from his superior was quite an offence and Helios started to be seriously worried.

Chasing Selene wasn't easy with a lot of people in the corridor, so only after he lost him, Helios noticed he was near the landing hangar. As it couldn't hurt, he went in to see if his missing navi was inside.

It soon turned out that indeed, Selene was there. But why were Abel and Cain standing defensively before him, with a tall female fighter shielding her own navigator from all of them...?

/

 _Few minutes earlier_

"Whatcha sent him?" asked Cain, finally catching up to his navigator, who was marching across the landing hall.

" 'There's someone among new guys who looks just like you. U have a double?' is what it said." Abel manouvered through ships and people, directing them straight to their objective. When they saw the other Selene, Abel elbowed his fighter. "I'm the one doing talking, come on."

"Hey, Selene!" Abel shouted, running. And being as close, he already could see how wrong they were. It wasn't Selene, it was someone really similar, but...

"Ugh, excuse me? You are talking to me?"

… a woman. Shorter and with more delicate features, but undoubtedly with the same genotype as Selene. She was even smiling like him, with one corner of her mouth and her eyes were looking at Abel and Cain with the same calm dignity that was characteristic for Selene. Damn, even her hair were the same colour and length as his!

Abel was thinking very fast, so by the time he stopped before woman-Selene he was smiling invitingly and tried to look friendly.

"Ooooch, I must have mistook you for someone. But really, you look just like him, right Cain?"

"Sure does."

"Really? Your friend looks like me?" Abel didn't know why, but the navigator woman, actually more like a girl, seemed to be quite disturbed at such thought. She uncounciously made a step back.

"Yeah, you two are really hard to tell apart." Abel nodded, still smiling. "I'm Abel, what's your task name?"

"I'm... erm.." the girl began to move back, one little step after another, until Abel elbowed Cain to stop staring at her so evily. As if by magic, another fighter appeared by their side, a tall, black-haired woman, who looked at them equally threteaningly as Cain did a few moments ago. Abel blinked.

"They giving you trouble?" she asked the girl, who seemed to have woken up from her stupor of rabbit in headlights. She waved her hands violently.

"It's nothing, really! They wanted to be friendly! They said they have a friend that looks totally like me and that's how it went... Oh!" she turned to Abel, looking at him for some support for her pacifistic mediations, since both fighters were eyeing each other aggresively. "I'm Carmilla, by the way. And this is my fighter, Lestat."

"Eh? I thought Lestat was a man in the books?" Abel took on the hint and stepped in front of Cain to break his eye contact with the other blackhair. Carmilla visibly relaxed.

"He was, but someone in the Central Command has funny naming sense." she stated, a little more calmly. "Our ship is called "The Count", to top it all..."

Both navigators laughed, already on friendly terms.

"Abel, right?" Lestat asked, her voice low for a woman and even if not hostile per se, still holding a lot of negative emotions. "Of The Reliant?"

"And so what if he is?" Cain hissed in answer. They looked at each other with scorn and Abel was about to sigh and tell Cain to cut it out, when he looked over fighters' shoulders, just to see Selene running through one of the entrances. He was looking around with an expression that Abel still hasn't seen on him yet. Abel frowned, but stood on his toes and waved.

"Hey, Selene! Here!"

As everybody followed his gaze, some things happened at the same time. First, when Selene was still far away, Carmilla groaned and backed off into a wing of one of the ships.

"Oh no.. "she whispered. She was white as a sheet and her lips trembled. "oh no no no no no!"

Lestat turned to her and back to closing Selene, focusing on him as a potential threat. Standing before her navi, she took a defensive position and waited. Then, Cain jumped to Selene to catch him by shoulder, as the navigator was gasping for breath, equally pale as Carmilla. He stopped abruptly pointing a finger at her.

"Why!" he shouted, despair evident in his not-anymore-serene voice. "Why are you here, Ju-"

"No names!" barked Lestat. "you may know each other, but you don't want people know your identity huh?!"

"Selene, what happened?" Abel took his other side, securing his left shoulder. "You look awful!"

"Why! Why here, of all places..."

"I'm sorry! I'm so, so, so sorry" wailed Carmilla from behind her fighter. She was covering her face with hands and apparently cried from fear. "I didn't you would be here! I'm so sorry, brother!"

That was when Helios came in.


	2. Chapter 2

**Witch: Here is the next part! I hope you will enjoy it:)**

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

"... so, to sum it up, someone in the Central Command ignored the rule of not assigning siblings to one ship and that's how you both ended up on Kepler? Not knowing about each other?"

"Yes, sir!"

Commander Hayden was eyeing both navigators with suspiscious eyes. Truth to be told, they couldn't lie about being siblings, twins: if there weren't obvious differences because of the sex, Carmilla and Selene would be undistinguishable.

"This is a problem." Commander stated the fact. "Is there any possibility of re-assignment?"

"Not from our side." quickly said captain Chronos, until now standing quietly behind others. His strange half-smile was back on. "We left our base some time ago, no change in personnel is possible as far as my squad is concerned."

"We can send Carmilla back to main base with one of the transports." Keeler proposed sweetly, even if his mouth was curled into teasing smile. "That is if there is no other option."

"Certainly not." captain Chronos was polite, but his eyes looked like two hostile ice shards. "I cannot destroy one of my best teams just because you tell me to."

"And if that's an order?"

"I report to Commander Faraday." said Chronos stiffly.

"... who isn't here at the moment." Commander Hayden sighed tiredly. Then turned to anxious navigators. "You can go for now. Go to your quarters and duties as usual, only both of you and your partners, are grounded until we reach some solutions. Dismissed!"

Knowing from experience that discussion about their matter would take some time, Selene took Carmilla's hand and they left CO's office in awkward silence. Which didn't last long actually, since when the door was sliding back close, they could hear that Keeler and Chronos started their arguing again.

The twins looked at each other and Selene sighed heavily, rubbing his eyes.

"Let's go somewhere where we can talk. We still have-"

"Carmilla!"

Selene felt his hand being abruptly taken away from his sister's, when Lestat came to them in long strides and stood before her navigator, shielding her again.

"Get away from her." she barked rudely. "You may be her brother, but I won't allow you to make her cry!"

From the corner of his eye Selene could see Helios hurrying to his side, breaking from Cain and Abel, who stood at the other end of the corridor. He didn't know why, but he stiffened even more.

"I'm okay, Lestat." Carmilla's voice was quiet and she was still sniffing from time to time. "It's not his fault."

"Bullshit."

"And we really should talk, you know? There is something that is strange and I want to..."

"You won't go anywhere without me, you hear?!"

"Listen, Lestat." Selene tried really hard to stay composed. Nothing good would come from getting into another shouting mess. "I must talk to her. With or without you, but we have to talk!"  
"You know where you can shove your talk?"

That was it. Selene felt that this day was way too long and all the accidents that happened were giving him not only headache, but also strained his already weak nerves. Knowing that he would either start shouting or crying, he tightened his fists. Of course, because she saw his gesture and interpreted it wrongly, Lestat made a step towards him with her own hands rised.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Helios appeared before her, seperating her and his navigator by sliding in between them. "I think that's enough. Why don't we all calm down?"

Right this moment the door to office slid open and captain Chronos stormed out of there. His face was contorted into really ugly mask of fury, but taking notice of people in a split of second he was beautiful again and even smiling. He came closer to the group and put his hand on Lestat's shoulder.

"What're you guys still doing here? I thought you'd be long gone, ya know?"

"Just wanted to discuss something. Sir." Selene tried to look indifferent, but it was hard to do, since he was talking from behind Helios' bigger frame. "Little... misunderstanding."

"Misunderstanding, my ass!" Lestat again wanted to jump to them, but strangely enough, she didn't move. From her angry glance Selene could tell that Chronos single-handedly held her in place.

"Is that so." he said slowly. "unfortunately for you, sweetie, I get to get them first." a smile together with this phrase was just sugary. "Ya know, leader and stuff. But, I promise you'll get them after me, just a little bit used, okay?"

"Um... sir?"

"Good! So we reached an agreement!" Chronos beamed, then strenghtened his grip on Lestat's shoulder and took Carmilla's hand. "Laters!"

While they were looking after the captain dragging two women after humself, Helios came back to life.

"What the hell was that?"

"Beats me." sighed Selene. He turned to his fighter. "thank you for help, though. That Lestat woman is plainly aggressive."

"Oh, no problem." Helios grinned and in Selene's eyes he became even more handsome.

"On the contrary, I..."

"Are you two alright? Helios, that was some good action on your part!"

Selene gritted his teeth. In the meantime, when Chronos was talking to them, Abel came closer. And as much as he knew that Abel wanted to just exclaim how level headed the fighter was, Selene couldn't help, but look at him with envy so fiery that set his bleeding heart on fire. Because when Helios turned to Abel, his face literary lit up.

"Thanks, Abel!"

"Is everything alright, Selene? I mean, with the commander?" Abel asked, cocking his head to one side.

"Yes, thank you." said Selene flatly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to work."

Turning on his heel, he left Helios and Abel alone again, one of them astonished and the other a little offended. He instantly regretted that, but there was no turning back; also, he was quite sure Helios would take his chance and... he didn't know what, tried hard to not imagine the obvious outcome, that would be Helios jumping Abel if he would just find a moment for him to be alone. But Selene didn't want to believe it to happen. Didn't want it to happen. No matter what, he didn't want to. Which didn't change anything.

As he was going away down the corridor, Abel frowned.

"Do you think he is alright?"

Helios started, woken up from his smitten observetion of the navigator. With a surprised blink, he shrugged.

"I think so." he said, dissmisively. Then, grinned. "It's cute of you to be worried, you know?"

"What do you mean by 'I think so'?" Abel didn't react to the pick up phrase and even looked a little irritated. Helios blinked some more.

"Huh?"

"Selene is your navigator, Helios. And your responsibility, as you are his. And you say you don't know if he is alright?" Abel said. Disbelief in his voice was so great, that Helios started feeling a little bit embarassed. But that didn't prevent him from asking:

"I'll check up on him. So, have you finished working?"

/

After unsuccessful attempt at convincing Abel for some food, Helios grabbed his own dinner at the fighters' table. Because they were gossping like market ladies, the mess hall was full of buzzing noises of people that 'I don't know for sure, but I heard...'. Soon, Helios became tired with everyone's crazy imagination about the new guys and he decided to leave. Especially because the new squad had just come in, with captain Chronos in the lead. _Quite a silent bunch_ , Helios thought, passing them, when they waited for their turn in food order. Fighters were mostly men, navigators seemed to be divided into half. However, they didn't seperate, stood quietly together and didn't even look to the sides. Strange.

And Helios didn't see Carmilla and Lestat anywhere in the group.

After short walk, he got to his bunk with a quiet sigh of satisfaction. But it died down when he opened the door, because he saw Selene sitting down on the bed with face in his hands. Hearing the door, he jumped straight up, tense and with tightened lips.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, surprised. "It's you Helios..."

"Yeah, just me." Helios answered, observing with sudden worry that Selene seeing him relaxed for a minute, but right now he was stiff and stressed again. "You okay?"

"Yes... Yes, of course!" Selene tried to smile, but his lips trembled and he must have noticed that Helios was looking at him with question in his eyes. He turned away from his fighter.

"I'm alright. Really." he added. Suddenly, he drew his hands to his elbows as if some cold wind got inside their small room.

"Hey..." Helios pried gently, hushing his voice. "Hey, Selene, what's wrong?"

"Nothing!" suddenly angry, Selene shouted loudly. "Nothing is wrong, Helios! Just leave me alone, okay?!"

The fighter stood where he stopped, just made sure to close the door. In silence, he looked as Selene caught his head in hands and squeezed with painful expression.

"Nothing." he repeated more quietly. "Nothing is alright, Helios."

Helios took it as a hint to inquire more, so carefully, he made a step inside.

"Talk to me? Please?" he tried, remembering what Abel said earlier today. Selene was his responsibility and right now, he felt disgusted with himself for not noticing how nerve-wrecked his navigator became.

"Why do you care?" asked Selene and this time Helios felt like a real asshole. It occurred him for the first time that running after Abel might have had a rather bad impact on his and Selene's relationship. He wanted it to be good, so that they could support each other in battle and in life during stay on Kepler, but it turned out he sabotaged it himself by being an idiot thinking with his dick more. Helios groaned at himself. He had to make it better somehow. Right. But how, again?

"You are my navigator." he said simply, remmebering what Abel said and deciding that was the best reason for now. "You are important for me. Please?"

"It's not much to tell." said Selene, bitting on his knuckles. "It's just... this situation is hard for me."

 _No shit Sherlock_ , thought Helios, observing as Selene started pacing in a space that allowed him to do two small steps in every direction. But he remained silent and unmoving and listened.

"I... you may think it's strange, but we don't know each other well and I didn't want anyone to know I have a sister, because really, I didn't even know she joined the army and that she would be here, well she should be somewhere else with all the stuff we agreed on earlier..."

 _You're babling_ , Helios sighed in his soul, still following nervous Selene with his eyes. _Why are you babling so much?_

"You on bad terms with her?" he asked, when string of quickly spoken words became quieter and then inaudible in the end.

"What? No!"

"So why is it so hard on you?" the moment he said that, Helios understood it was too blunt an approach, since Selene frowned and tensed again.

"It's hard to explain." he said, more calmly. Helios jumped at his chance immidiately.

"Try me." he proposed, grinning a little embarrased. "I'm an idiot sometimes, but maybe I could help you?"

"Yes, you are." said Selene firmly, finally composing himself seeing that he made Helios uncomfortable. He watched Helios for a while, as if deciding in his mind whether it's worth talking to him. Then, he sat heavily on the bed and weaved his long fingers through his hair. "Well, as everybody knows, we are twins..."

"Hard to not notice that, you know?" Helios interrupted, but right away shut himself up, after a single, short glance he got from Selene. Deciding the momentum is with him, Helios went further into the room and took place on the cupboard, in front of his navigator.

"Right. So just you know, I'm the older twin." Selene continued to look at his knees. "We were born together and lived together for nineteen years. And... I don't think you know about this, but there is something like 'twin trouble', which involves problems with gaining individuality when you are constantly with your sibling..." seeing that he lost Helios there, Selene smiled a little and continued. "we had issues as twins. We didn't want to be seperated, threw fits of anger if we were and it was so severe that Ju... ugh... Carmilla was once sent to hospital, because she got sick while away from me. And it worried our parents."

"Loving siblings, huh?" Helios couldn't help himself not to say this ironic expression, but Selene sighed tiredly.

"Yes, indeed. I know what you want to say – 'what the hell does it have to do with anything?' Actually it does. Imagine that when we were teenagers, suddenly we realized we were seperate beings. And when I say 'realized' I mean just that. It was abrupt, unpleasant and we ended up fighting seriously. Things turned ugly and after that it only got worse. I'm quite smart." Selene stated, as if it was obvious and remembering how well he was doing his job and during VR training, Helios nodded in agreement without commenting. "we both are. But Carmilla was somehow always better than me. The problem was, she wasn't even trying. I don't know how to explain it... due to unexpected circumstances, she was always in favour, be it in sports or in learning. That bothered both of us, since I'm aware she didn't want to do it..."

"Really." Helios sceptically rised his eyebrows. He wasn't a psychologist himself, but it was hard for him to imagine a person being better and not scheming for it.

Selene threw him a nasty glare.

"Yes, really. I told you it's difficult... but she isn't like that and I know it. I just know it..." he took his head in hands again and reverted to looking back at his knees. "We fought a lot and made up, but it slowly killed our bond as twins. And everything broke into pieces, when she... well..." Selene was bowed low over his knees, but Helios could clearly see how his ears became pink. "When she took away from me the first person I fell in love with."

"Oh shit."

"That made me very mad." Selene continued as if he wanted to get it over with even if he would die from embarrasement. "but she broke up with him immediately after she got to know I loved him."

 _Him, huh?_ , was what Helios focused on. Somehow, until now he thought Selene was a type that was very uptight and proper, nearly expecting to get to know he had had a fiancee waiting for him at home. Not the case now, right?

"If that had been just this one, I think we wouldn't have... but it wasn't. There were more and more people coming to me and then leaving me for her... and finally I didn't.. I just... I snapped. We said a lot of things that are hard to forget and separated on our nineteenth birthday just like that. I went to entirely different country to study. Then joined the Alliance and well, here I am."

Still in his weird little defensive position, Selene stilled as if he was waiting for judgement from Helios.

"Erm... but you said you weren't on bad terms?" Helios tried. To be completely honest he didn't get what Selene was trying to tell him, all that psychological things made him confused as hell. There was one thing he knew now, that that Carmilla girl wasn't as innocent as she seemed at the first glance, with her tears and all. He felt that it had to be rememebered from now on.

"Because we aren't." Selene responded quietly. His arms fell down and he straightened a little, even if still not looking at Helios. "After separation... we did really badly, both of us. I... I neglected my studies and ended up cooped in my bed with depression. That was such a horrbile time."

Helios flinched as he finally understood that Selene was feverish. His eyes were gleaming with unhealthy light, he was trembling and sweating at the same time perodically stilling as if turning into stone.

"And then she called." Selene rised his beautiful eyes and looked through Helios, as if there was something fascinating at the wall behind him. "Sick and equally tired as I was. She was just out of the hospital and didn't have anywhere to go. We thought that then everything would be alright, we were both adults and after hitting the bottom, we weren't so hostile anymore. But..."

"It didn't work out?"

"No."

Just one short answer told Helios more than Selene would have tried to get across by words. All that tiredness, loneliness, lack of understanding and warm, forgiving presence of someone that knew you since you were babies... Valentina was older than him and that wasn't exactly the case with them, but he still felt quite bad without her. What could have felt those twins, abnormally attatched to each other?

"We decided to not meet again, no matter how hard it was from then on." Selene continued in strange little voice that Helios didn't know he could utter. "and it was hard. But somehow we lived... until today." he finished, surprise evident in his voice. "How long has it been..."

Helios felt very angry. He tried to calm down, telling himself that Selene needs help, but he couldn't help his own anger spilling through angry puffs of air he was taking. That was one riddiculous situation! He didn't have any doubts that Selene, his sweet, lovely Selene was more passive and got used by his more active twin. Things like that happened, right? He felt like he was to blame and it was wearing him out. Most likely he managed to escape from that sister of his and stabilize his own life, when his nemezis came back unexpectedly, wearing a mask of a scared, white lamb! Helios was a gentleman and all, but right now he might have told Carmilla come sour words if he had met her.

"You are tired." he began carefully, painfully aware that if he rushed into it, Selene might close up again. His strange stupor was worrying, but right now getting him to bed took priority. "You feel bad and you may be going down with something. How about some rest?"

Selene's eyes focused on him. Then, he frowned.

"Yes. Rest." he agreed, but didn't make any move to actually lie down or take off his clothes. Deciding that they don't have to keep up appearances, Helios grabbed his own duvet and covered Selene with it. The navigator flinched, when Helios' gentle hands touched his own feverish body.

"Hush, it's okay." said Helios, cringing inwardly at the nonsense he was spouting. "everything is going to be okay, just lie down for a moment. Just for a moment, alright?"

"A'ght." Selene mumbled, half-asleep already. He obediently allowed Helios to tuck him in and drifted away into dreams as soon as his fighter told him to close his eyes.

Helios sighed. He was still woried, since Selene's breath was ragging a little, but at least he actually fell asleep, out of that terrifying indifference he went into at the end of his story.

/

An hour later, when Helios made sure that Selene would sleep peacefully, he left their room and directed his steps to the bridge. Still annoyed, he deduced that it was sure hit if he looked for any navigator. Because he was and Carmilla wouldn't be happy if he finally met her.

The bridge was as busy as ever, but after scouting for some time, Helios discovered that there weren't any new navigators on this shift. Actually he didn't even know if they were assigned yet, delegated to rest after the attack. Probability of that was high, which irritated him some more, but at the same time helped – he let some of his steam off, so right now, he could calmly and clearly tell Carmilla to leave them fucking alone. Yeah.

Asking other navigators about the new ones didn't make him any good, as they were not even aware of the quarters of Commander Faraday's squad. Disappointed, Helios went to the mess hall. He wanted to ask some fellow fighters if they saw some on the new guys. However, before he reached the place, he thought that maybe some of the new fighters would be by their ships. Excited at this idea, he ran towards landing hangar, the begining place of this whole psychological mess.

As he was voyageing through vast space, he wandered into corner that was usually empty. As expected, the new ships were there and there were even some people grouped near one of them. But when Helios neared to it, he sped up even more. He didn't like the situation that was happening there.

On the wing of one of the machines was sitting small redheaded woman. Helios rememebred her faintly from mess hall, so he was quite surprised that she had fighter clothes on. She was listening to cat-calls and whistles of base fighters under her feet. From where Helios was he could see that the woman had slanting eyes and looked a little like a cat waiting for the birds to be completely at ease before jumping in. Which was quite surprising, since the other fighters were all but polite.

"Hey, cutie, come down to us, let's play!"

They became even louder, when she smiled and showed them middle finger. That was unnecesary brave of her, Helios thought, because they would get her from there in the end and she would be sorry. Such small, delicate body for a fighter.

The hatch opened and a black haired head peeked out. Redhead looked in that direction with a wide smile.

"Ow, fuck, ow!" the other fighter emerged from inside the ship and Helios recognized Carmilla's partner, Lestat. She was holding her head as if she hit it with something and looked quite pissed off.

"Oi, fuckheads!" Lestat yelled to the crowd below her ship. "fuck off! And you, Muffin, don't provoke them, for fuck's sake!"

Saying this, Lestat jumped out of the fighter and stood on the wing, beside small woman, whose task name Helios didn't know, refusing to acknowlegde that 'muffin'. Fighters from Kepler got even louder.

"Get down here, so we see how brave you are, kitty!"

Helios wasn't so sure if he wasn't seeing things, but for a moment there he could swear that Lestat was smiling. But he didn't think about it more, since she really did jump down, straight into the other fighters' group. Helios could hear their ironic 'whoa!'.

What happened then, he wasn't so sure either. He was standing in the last row of the crowd, so by going down, Lestat disappeared from his sight. Of course he heard a mocking statements of some fighters that she was so fragile, so beautiful and they would definitely spent some quality time together... then there was an awful, organic sound of something breaking, someone shouted as if in terrible pain and the group moved. Redhead jumped down as well, commotion streghtened as the fighters apparently wanted to lynch two women. Helios quickly run upstairs to the nearby gallery to see better. Then, suddenly everybody stilled. In unexpected silence, Helios could hear loud, modulated voice of captain Chronos.

"..so?"

"Sorry, cap'n." Lestat's voice was dripping with gloomy satisfaction. "I broke another one."

While saying this, she rised up one of the fighters, holding him by his elbow. The man yelped in pain and his arm below elbow was bending in weird way. Helios shuddered. She broke his arm and lifted him by it!

The group, however very angry and violent, dissolved under leading charisma of Chronos, so Helios went closer again, taking advantage of little people near. Lestat was talking quietly with Chronos, while the redhead and another female fighter that apparently came with Chronos, were waiting near, not saying anything. Helios stopped a little further away, waiting for the captain to be gone and while he stood there, he realized that he could understand some of the conversation from how their lips were moving. He didn't think that such a skill would be useful, but he would have to thank V. later, since Lestat and Chronos' words were strange, to say at least.

" _... so I'll have to put a replacement team for the fucker you broke. What should I do?"_ asked Chronos, rubbing his temples. His lips were easy to read, very expressive.

" _Give them (here Helios couldn't decipher) and try to stall. We can't seperate the unit now."_ aswered Lestat, looking around. Her eyes, dark and aggressive, scanned the hangar.

" _It would be helluva lot easier if you could hold yer head down, instead of getting in fights."_ Captain made a mockingly crying face, as if parodying desperation. Helios was bewildered. He wasn't in the army for long, but he didn't recall any officer behaving like that, not with his underlings. And Lestat wasn't an officer, Chronos was supposed to be her superior.

She shrugged.

" _Had to let off some steam. Can't have them bossing us around. Moment as good as any. If only we could..."_

"Do you need something from Captain Chronos?"

The voice that suddenly appeared by his left ear wasn't hostile. It was gentle and interested and suggested help, contrary to a blade digging into his side, under ribs, just barely not cutting the skin. Helios flinched, but didn't move, throwing his gaze over his shoulder. All he could see was mane of nasty red hair.

"Muffin!"

The blade didn't move an inch, but in his line of vision he noticed the small redheaded woman from earlier. She was still grinning impishly, looking as Lestat, who with a towel around her neck was walking quickly in their direction.

"What in the flying fuck are you doing? You can't go around cutting random guys!"

"Didn't want him to interrupt you." Redhead said simply and Helios cringed at her voice: high and hoarse, as if her throat was damaged. The blade disappeared.

"Gods, you are such an idiot sometimes." barked Lestat. Behind her, Chronos observed them intently. "Should've said something."

Lestat turned to Helios, her long hair in braid smacking her face.

"So? What d'ya want with me?"

"Nothing much." Helios growled back, having had enough of this farse. "Just your navigator. Where is she?"

"Sleeping." Lestat said immediately. "Why?"

"Not your bussiness."

"Listen, you little...!"

"What's your task name, fighter?" suddenly, Chronos was beside them, holding both of them by shoulders and Helios could feel how strong his seemingly light grip was. Chronos had gentle smile on his beautiful lips, but his eyes looked at Helios without blinking, careful and a little terrifying.

"It's Carmilla's brother's fighter." squeaked Muffin from behind them. "What's-his-face..."

"Helios." said Lestat. "Helios, right? Like the sun god?"

"So what?" Helios was really angry now, not in the mood to hold a proper conversation with those bastard people. Chronos' grip on his shoulder relaxed.

"So what, sir." he corrected calmly, letting Helios go entirely, still holding Lestat though. "and answering your question, it's nothing, fighter. Just asking."

"So were is Carmilla?" Helios tried again. "Sir."

"As I remember it, Navigator Carmilla had problems with coping with changing environment and has been dismissed for this shift." Chronos said smoothly, still watching Helios. "I would be very thankful if you restrained from intruding her sleep, as I'm going to need all my navigators, should the morning come."

Helios growled to himself. He didn't know why, but he felt endangered here, in a hangar full of people and in company of those strange new comers. He didn't like it. And Chronos' changing speech patterns were driving him crazy, as if he was talking with two different people at the same time.

"Of course, her fighter here, Lestat, might be able to help you." Chronos added, as if he was completely blind and couldn't tell that Lestat was staring daggers in Helios' chest. "As unfortunately, it's time for me to leave you now."

When Chronos let her go, Lestat didn't even turn to her leaving officer. The man just nodded lightly at Helios standing a little more at attention, then beckoned at the female fighter that was standing on the side, not saying anything. As Helios noticed, she had her hands behind her back, as if hiding something and when she turned to follow Chronos, he could see two holsters slightly shaping her jacket at the small of her back. _A bodyguard?_ , he thought surprised, since he was quite sure even fighters couldn't carry arms on Kepler. But his attention quickly snapped back to Lestat, who stepped closer, into his personal space.

She was nearly as tall as he was.

"What d'ya want from my navi, smartass?"

"Not your bussiness, again." Helios answered, frowning. He was annoyed all evening because of this riddiculous situation, had his anger under control somehow, but she flared in rage in a second flat and he couldn't understand why. He kind of understood why weren't there many female fighters.

"My navi, my bussiness. Spill it, dammit!"

"Your bussiness, you say?" he asked, narrowing his eyes. "So, I'm gonna kick your ass for my navi, then."

"Wha -?"

Lestat avoided direct punch by jumping backwards, staring with bewildered eyes at Helios, who calmly reverted to basic offensive stance.

"What the fuck are you..."

"Just don't let your little vampire near my navigator, got it?" Helios snarled, amazed with himself. He knew both of them were fighters and Lestat was probably trained to brawl, but he hadn't thought he would be able to attack a woman, fighter or not. On the other hand, he was doing it right now, advancing and trying to land a kick to her side. Lestat guarded, winced, then caught his ankle and pulled, wanting to throw him off balance.

"What's she done to you, you little fuck?" she yelled, watching as Helios took two steps back to regain steady feet.

"She exists." Helios hauled himself at her, in mid-step doing a turn, to get her defensive punch on his arm and break her guard. But Lestat didn't look for hand-to-hand combat, she used his half-turn to jump left and away, gaining distance.

"Oh yeah!? You are something else for saying that with straight face, when you know very well what your stupid Selene'd done!"

"Keep him out of it! He's the victim here."

"Right, so why I had to drug my navi to stop her from crying her eyes out for your navi?!"

They looked at each other, both panting not as much from improvised fight as from anger.

"Wait, what?" Helios processed what he heard not understanding. "Drugged?"

"Carmilla had a hysterics fit and she cried so hard she couldn't breathe. You know, after she saw her long-lost bro." Muffin, unmoved by the brawl going on, was sitting on nearby crate of tools, cleaning her nails with the knife. "Lestat had to drug her up by force to make sure the poor gal won't suffocate."

"What?" repeated Helios, dropping his guard. "But why?"

"Dunno." Lestat dropped hers, but still watched him for any sign of aggressivness. "So, what the hell's your deal?"

"Selene told me about their childhood and break up and slid into some kind of stupor just from going into that." said Helios slowly, thinking furiously. The two women look at him with wide, confused eyes.

"Huh?"

"I mean, it wasn't something normal, he looked..."

"...delirious?" Lestat snapped. She exchanged knowing glance with suddenly interested redhead.

"Kind of." Helios agreed, his previous conviction slightly shaken.

Silence that followed was full of undiscussed problems. Not knowing what excatly he should be doing now and understanding suddenly much less that he thought he did, Helios observed as Lestat caught her jacket from somewhere and smacked Muffin upside down her shaggy head. They whispered for a moment, covering their mouth, so even being close, Helios couldn't make out what was it about. Then Lestat pulled away and beckoned at Helios.

"Walk with me."

Even though his head hurt from lack of sleep, even though adrenaline still pumped in his ears, even though he felt unsure about the situation he had gotten himself into, Helios took orders rather well. Self-confident voice of Lestat did it for his tired brain and before he composed himself and rebelled just for the heck of it, he found himself in the corridor, turning here and there, just to walk right into bunk area near med bay.

Lestat stopped before one of the doors.

"I'm assigned here." she said, pointing at the number for Helios to remember. "Tell you what. Bring your little moon princess tomorrow. I have a fucking suspicion there's something to discuss between the two of them and I want to be there when they do."

Helios nodded, wondering why she was so polite all of the sudden, but agreeing that it was the best they could do, instead of jumping to each other's throat. Their navigators had something to settle and it was their job to see to it. No way around it.

Lestat palmed the lock and Helios was about to leave, before he nearly lost his balance again, when Lestat grabbed collar of his jacket and yanked him inside the room.

"What the-?"

"Shut up."

Lestat clasped hand over his mouth and he thought for a moment about biting her, but she directed his head to the center of the not very wide room. Helios blinked.

On the floor in the farthest point from the door, on one of matresses taken off from bed, he could see Selene and Carmilla, covered with one duvet and sleeping peacefully.


	3. Chapter 3

_Witch: ugh, nothing to say that is not an apology. to make it better next chapter is already written and waits to be published. next one, the last one is half written :)_

* * *

Few days later it could be said that Faraday's squad managed to mingle into Kepler's crew.

Not without problems, though.

Navigators had it easy. Majority of them earth-born, educated, well-mannered, even if some hid rotten core under all that cream-white cleanness. Navigators were tactical; even if Keeler couldn't disagree to take the new staff in, he could at least make sure they wouldn't be able to interfere. He watched, as they came to the bridge all together, herded like sheep by two big fighters from Faraday's squad, looking scared and deceivingly harmless. Keeler knew better than to believe that. Commander Faraday, even if he was a fighter or a rumor had it that he was, kept his navigators on short leash and Keeler had a sneaking, very uncomfortable suspicion about their sudden appearance at that particular time. As much as Keeler was anxious about letting the newcomers into the engine design without going against direct order to make them cooperate, he soon discovered, to his small satisfaction, that Faraday's navigators knew little to nothing of the new project and could be safely ushered away from it. Eight men and six women were made into additional navigational team, divided and shared between all shifts of normal roster. And it was all Keeler had to deal with.

On the other hand, the fighter's base, on surface as crazy with testosterone as usual, suffered a small earthquake. Normally aggressive bunch of people whose job consisted of being good at brawling became even more violent without any conscious reason. Fights and more severe arguments escalated, level of injuries varying from broken noses to lacerated internal organs and bashed heads. Encke, in everyday situations composed and a little bored, started to have had enough of this bullshit. Throwing couple of firecrackers in brig made fighter's base a little calmer, but at the same time the lead fighter was painfully aware it wasn't going to solve the problem in the long run. And the problem was what to do with Faraday's lackeys.

Actually, as much as Encke was aware, Faraday's people were well-trained and kept to themselves, seemed more military disciplined and better at taking orders than the unruly bunch Encke ended up with on the Kepler. On the other hand however, even if they really did take orders from him, they always waited for Chronos to acknowledge them what made Encke feel like an idiot every time he tried to made the newcomers join the rest of the crew. They didn't do it when he was looking, of course, not stupid enough to get at the bad side of lead fighter, but he could tell when someone tried to stall and while receiving orders, that fucking Fradayers did just that. _Yessirs_ and _No, sirs_ we spoken readily and smoothly, but after that always came a moment of silence, sideways glance at the end of the row, where that smiling, sneaky bastard was standing. Encke could swear that Chronos enjoyed it immensely, making him look stupid in front of his own crew, led by nose by someone who was the stranger on Encke's home turf. Encke wished he could just call him on that, bash fucker's teeth in and actually get some work done without Chronos' mocking smile hovering over him. However, due to special circumstances of Chronos being the captain and Encke just a lieutenant made everything even more fucked up. Was a captain of a squad higher in military hierarchy than a lieutenant of the whole ship? Probably not and that was a plus, even if Commander Hayden told him not to take his chances. Faraday wasn't here, couldn't be contacted and he was the one who could make Chronos listen to Encke as a subordinate. Without that, the administration would just chew him and spit out, since theoretically rank is a rank. Encke was not a fan of that.

So, he endured. Kept his fighters and eleven Faraday's in brittle balance, making his own little revenge by seeing who could endure his own accelerated training menu. As far, eight new fuckers were managing rather well and Encke was impressed under a cover of being actually irritated. Not to mention that Chronos was running his twentieth lap looking fresh like a fucking flower. Encke treated it as his own personal grudge.

Of course, if his problems were restricted to just this, he would be a happy man. Dealing with fighter's shit wasn't however as exhausting as the other thing Hayden asked of him.

Encke was seriously wondering who could have been either drunk or lacking brain enough to put three women on the ship full of sexually frustrated, testosterone pumped colony fighters. True, the moment one of them was attacked Encke ended up with broken-armed fighter and a team he had to pull off the roster and substitute, but how long could this drag on? There were only three of them, by the look of things only one was capable of fighting an enemy off if it came to that, the other two small, thin, nearly childish in comparison to the rest of the crew. Could have been trained as fighters and god knew how they had managed to pass the basic training, but Encke was too long in this man's army to not know what happened to women in fighter's base. They were either fucked, literarily _and_ metaphorically or just didn't make it past the first weeks. Of course, there was always the possibility that they had already been fucked by the fighters in their unit, getting themselves needed protection in a new place, but Encke was quite good at observing and he hadn't noticed any of such movement in the group. Not that it really worried him, not his men, not his problem, but he really wanted to make it as trouble-less as possible, before sending the reinforcements away.

Which was what he thought while flipping through new profiles and watching Faraday's men at their first joined training with Kepler crew. After that, when more and more his fighters were appearing bruised or limping at the briefings while three Faraday's women kept coming in and out unharmed, Encke started to wonder. And he started to wonder seriously, when one of the more idiotic brutes of his crew actually ended up in medical because of the littlest of the women, every bone in his arm and leg deliberately cracked into small pieces. There were two probable possibilities: either he didn't notice a bodyguard the each side of the women or there was something there he didn't quite understand. And because Encke was a clever man, when the next training session rolled in, he stuck his gaze to redheaded, diminutive fighter.

Then, on top of being clever, he became surprised.

/

Helios slept rather badly, turning and moving around in his bunk, unfamiliar feeling of loneliness overwhelming him, when he couldn't hear soft breaths of Selene sleeping above him. This emotion was so foreign to him that he couldn't do anything to slip easily into slumber, as he usually did. And that was the reason why he went to retrieve his navigator much earlier than he had decided on with Lestat.

The door hissed open after he rang a bell, presenting to him a very tired, doubtful woman. But before he could show his astonishment, Lestat composed herself.

"Good." she said, not really complaining. "Help me wake them up."

Lestat made place for Helios to move past her inside, then tapped at the computer's surface and the door clicked shut. When she turned around, Helios was kneeling beside the mattress and gently shaking Selene by his shoulder.

"You may want to do that harder. They sleep like dead."

Helios frowned. What Lestat said was true at least, even if he didn't like her tone, offensive and snappish. It made him want to fight her again, his fist clenching against his better judgment, so to make sure he wouldn't do anything stupid, he lowered his eyes to Selene again.

Shaking him didn't help at all. On his other side, Lestat was checking Carmilla's eyes, unfolding one of her eyelids. The result must have made her worried, because then she caught her navigator by her arms and forcefully made her sit upright, supporting her limp silhouette by the wall.

"He's not waking up?" Lestat asked, getting up and shuffling in the nearby dresser.

"No. Doesn't even react to me."

"Pity." Lestat took a syringe and a tube with clear liquid inside from the dresser with a heavy sigh. She gestured Helios to go to the bathroom. "go there and take some water. Wet a towel and come back, we have to wake up your sleeping prince."

"Okay." Helios answered. He didn't like Lestat and her bossiness, but at the same time he was rather content that she had some ideas what to do in this situation. As for him, his knowledge was about to stick her tongue out at him and tell him to make do alone.

As he returned, Lestat was just disposing of the syringe, still holding Carmilla's prickled wrist. Neither of the navigators moved in the few minutes he was out of the room and Helios began to feel uneasy. Selene was breathing, he was sure of that, but such unresponsiveness was worrisome, to say at least.

Helios kneeled back by Selene.

"Make him sit." Lestat ordered, again checking Carmilla's pupils. "Put the towel on his nape and if it doesn't do anything, try his scalp."

"Isn't that treatment for fever?" Helios asked, his memory suddenly kicking in, in the least expected moment. _Thank you, brain._ But Lestat looked at him with a scowl.

"Just do it."

Thankfully, Helios didn't even have to do anything more, because at the touch of cold, wet towel on his neck Selene's eyelashes fluttered and his eyes opened immediately.

"Huh…? Oh..? Wha—?"

"Rise and shine, baby." Lestat said, massaging Carmilla's veins in slow circles. "You've slept enough."

"Helios?" Selene's unfocused sight found his fighter. "Why is she here?"

"Actually, we are in Lestat's room." Helios observed with worry as Selene looked around in confusion, taking in mattress on the floor, kneeling fighters and still motionless Carmilla. When his pupils dilated in sudden dread, Helios was ready.

"Why—"

"She is sleeping." he interrupted Selene sternly, wanting to go through shock. Helios took hold of his wrists, just in case. "Lestat is waking Carmilla up."

"But—"

Selene would start to struggle, Helios saw it clearly in his scared, not-awake-enough eyes, however right this moment Carmilla sighed loudly, jerked uncontrollably and coughed.

"And the princess in up." said Lestat, watching as Carmilla hacked and bent over the sheets. "Come on baby, look at me."

"What is—"

As Selene still was held by Helios with Carmilla nearly lying on the mattress while leaning forward with her hands on her stomach, Lestat interrupted her tries to talk.

"So. Breakfast?"

/

It turned out pretty quickly that neither of the twins remembered much of yesterday. Instead of getting to know why they were together in the same room, entangled in blankets and sheets like a pair of kittens, Lestat and Helios had to fill them up on accidents of the previous day.

When they finished, four of them remained silent for some time, quiet buzzing of conversations in mess hall filling in the background.

"I don't get it." Carmilla rested her head on her hands in resignation. "I don't remember anything of what you've just said."

"Me neither." Selene added, furring his eyebrows. "How could I walk through two levels and half of the ship and not remember?"

"As you apparently did." Lestat barked in answer, eyeing her navigator from the corner of her eye. "But what gets to me is, how could you move when I put you to sleep with an overdose?" she turned to Carmilla. The girl twitched and looked up, her eyes wide and unbelieving.

"I could?" she blinked in confusion. "I did?"

Lestat shrugged.

"Someone must have opened the door for Selene. I locked them."

"Maybe—"

"With code."

"Oh."

"I still can't believe that I just sleep-walked there." Selene wondered, his voice tired. He had dark circles under his eyes and absentmindedly massaged his temples. "And that I told you, Helios, about my… our past…"

Behind them, the mess hall became busier and more crowded as the hour for shift change arrived. A lot of people were walking around, looking for place to sit and consume things that were called breakfast in space. Normally, the place was divided into separate sides for fighters and navigators, but Helios had thought better of it and agreed with Lestat when their eyes had met, that they should sit with their navis, just to check up on them. So they had done it, earning some sour glances from the other white-colored tables, but Helios couldn't have cared less at that time. During short walking to the mess, Selene had had to support himself on his shoulder more than once and it had made Helios positively worried. And from what he could see, Carmilla was even in worse shape.

"No problem." Helios said, focusing on Selene's pale face, taken away from his frantic planning how to skip briefing and put his navigator to bed properly. He felt that they expected him to say something else, since Lestat frowned and shook her head slightly. "I mean, it's alright. I won't tell anyone."

This time Lestat's head nodded.

"What do we do now?" Carmilla whined, again from behind her hands. "My head hurts like h… um, very bad and I have to report to the main navigator in like, half an hour?"

"I'll show you around." Selene said, looking at the other navigator as if trying really hard to remember who she was. "And Keeler isn't that bad. You don't have to be afraid."

"Okay." Carmilla agreed miserably. "And after the briefing and our shift?"

The twins exchanged tired look over their fighters' heads.

"Yes." Selene sighed heavily. "We will talk."

/

The rest of the day went flying for Helios, who failed to convince Selene about him needing to rest properly. So he accompanied his tired navigator to the Bridge, running at full speed afterwards, thanks to what he earned only an irritated look from the Leading Fighter instead of additional laps to run for being late. Which was lucky, since he wanted to just do his compulsory training and go check on Selene, worried over his beautiful, calm eyes, bruised and a little unfocused from that strange sleep he had experienced.

When he stood in his line, waiting for Encke's orders, he noticed that one of the fighters he knew, Hades, had a black eye that was spread on half of his face. Helios couldn't help but stare with wide eyes at blues, greens and violets over familiar face.

"Hey man, what's happened?" Helios asked before he could stop himself. As an answer, he received an animalistic growl of pure anger.

"Fuck off, Helios."

"He got his ass kicked by one of Faraday's bitches." Helios heard from a fighter next in the line, Hades's lackey, Thanatos. He was short, but bulky, with beady little eyes of jealous rat and Helios hated him form the bottom of his heart not really knowing why exactly. "That one had a bite."

"Huh?"

"Dude, you stupid or what? Three pussies from Faraday's squad join today's training."

Helios's brain must have caught up to this result seconds before Thanatos said it, because when he saw Lestat and Muffin entering the gym, he wasn't as surprised as he should have been. A collective murmur or moan went through gathered fighters, interrupting Encke's briefing. The man turned around, clearly pissed off.

Lestat made a show off of standing at attention and explaining something to the Lead Fighter, but Helios was too focused on the other two accompanying her that he ignored Encke's irritated responses. Because along with tall Lestat and redheaded Muffin came the other woman, the one saw with captain Chronos before, in the hangar. The one with guns.

The third woman was short like Muffin and black haired like Lestat. But her hair was short, she was skinny and boyish in frame, looking curiously around the gym from under her long fringe. Helios could only see that she had really bright eyes, before she started looking downwards, as Encke started to shout at them too.

"Really? That's it?"

Thanatos apparently wasn't impressed, eyeing the three with a snort. "Which one gave you this loving kiss, Hades?" he asked, gesturing towards the other fighter's bruised face. Hades bared his teeth.

Helios knew, he felt it in his bones that he shouldn't become interested, he shouldn't bother to interact with any of the new ones, but at the same time he understood that he didn't have much to say in this matter. He himself could choose, but Selene got tangled in this mess with his sister and as Helios decided Selene was his responsibility, it turned out he had to become involved too. For his tired, worried, beautiful Selene…

Sudden silence from when Encke finished reprimanding the women made Helios snap out from his reverie.

The briefing ended and training schedule was announced. For Kepler's crew to be fit was a must and Helios was aware that Encke had always been giving them work outs just slightly above their conditions to make them improve, but the monstrous amount of exercises that they got assigned right then must have meant that the Lead Fighter had something else in mind. Like letting them die from exhaustion. Helios looked at Encke in disbelief, as a lot of people did and found his smile terrifyingly homicidal.

"Come on, idiots." he said, as if urging them to riot. Helios thought that some of the fighters were greatly tempted to do just that, but they chickened out, unnerved by Encke's unmoving, stony smile. "Those are just laps and you're already resigning?"

Wanting or not, the group started to run.

/

Previously, Helios's plan consisted on being quick about his training and joining Selene for lunch as well as making sure that he was feeling better, because if not, Helios was determined to drag his navigator to his bunk. That was a good plan. However, not very doable.

As Helios limped achingly slowly to his and Selene's room, his thoughts were exclusively focused on getting there without tripping stupidly and falling to his face on the corridor. He felt sick, drained, wobbly and his head was about to swim away from him, even despite being still attached to his neck. Helios didn't even survive to the end of the murderous menu Encke designed. Instead, he had been rolled over to the wall, to other miserable losers and watched, fighting nausea, as about ten Kepler's and four Faraday's fighters had finished the exercises with Encke.

Helios was so tired that he remembered about checking on Selene only after palming the lock to the bunk and finding it code-closed, just like he left it in the morning. First, he blinked in surprise, only to moan miserably and bump his head on the wall. Not that he didn't want to just stroll into the bridge and kidnap Selene like a prince on white horse, to make him feel better, but he was just too beaten to actually think of physically walking to the bridge. Right now it seemed so far away, far, far away...

Not really thinking about it, Helios opened the lock and before he could process his own plans and thoughts, popping up and disappearing in a mayhem of tiredness, he fell down on his bunk and was asleep in two seconds flat.

/

Just as she was passing by a manitenance closet, someone jumped out of the shadow and hauled at Lestat, who didn't expect it in the slightest. Tha attacker managed to snake his arms past her defences and squeeze her neck, cutting the oxygen supply immediately, with a victorius cry kicking her in the stomach. However, his knee was stopped by a block Lestat managed to pull, at the same time mashing her own fist in his balls. The attacker's hold softened, Lestat broke free and headbutted him with all her might, an awful cracking sound echoing in the empty corridor. As the man slid to the floor, whimpering in pain, Lestat stood over him, whizzing and massaging her throat that started to swell already. She was blinking in confusion, as black dots started to appear before her eyes and she would have missed the next attack, but the man on the floor didn't manage to get up, as a heavy boot grinded his face into cold concrete again.

"Need help, Lestat?" asked a calm voice, refined, hushed sounds of a navigator, while the fighter accompanying him was busy kicking around the attacker. "How bad is it?"

"Not bad." she rasped, cringing. They were on Kepler not even two days and she had to fight off more idiots than she ever remembered doing. Feeling tired and suddenly suspicious, she glanced up at the navigator.

"You have something for me, Castor? I thought yourt shift is coming up?"

"It is." the navigator, Castor, nodded politely. "But we have some things to discuss and fortunately found you alone enough to present it. Pollux." at his beckoning, the fighter smiled maniacally and caught now unconscious attacker under his arms. Without much effort, he dragged the other man away from the corridor. "Now, let's go somewhere, where noone will hear us, yes?"

They didn't have to walk far, as they were in to corridor near engine rooms and hardly anyone was coming there this time of a day. Lestat pointed in the direction of one of such rooms and they settled on crates in soft humming of machinery. Castor took out his tablet then.

"What do you want to tell me?"

"Some update on the situation." Castor scrolled down on his datapad and handed it to Lestat. "that's what they're working on, some engine config that I clearly don't like just looking at it, but unfortunately for me, it's everything the CC handed to us. So, not our problem."

"Right. Anything else? Anything suspicious?"

"Not yet. However, we did slip in the spy bug, just in case. Not to mention "the plugs" in nuber of three in the bridge crew. Everything working smoothly until now."

"Who did you install there? Which plugs?"

"The code-busting ones. Djinn, Carmilla and Theseus. They should be fine."

They sat for a moment in silence, with Lestat going through tables of data and Castor calmly observing working engines, when Pollux peeked inside the room. He grinned and joined the two on the crates, closing the door securely behind himself.

"Finished?" he asked his navigator, who just nodded, shrugged and sighed heavily. Lestat gave him his tablet back and leaned on the wall, still massaging her throat.

"Anything new on your side, Pollux?"

"Not much. But we had some problems in the morning, because the Lead Navigator wanted to throw three our guys into the brig." Pollux shrugged too, smilling widely and a little bit unnaturely.

"Wha-? Why?"

"He said they harrassed his navigators. You know, sexually."

"They did?"

"Of course not. But it sounds convenient, doesn't it. I suspect he has a thing for Chronos, since it was clearly designed to piss off the captain." Pollux added, as if stating something obvious. Lestat stared at him in disbelief.

"Chronos. Really? Holy shit, if that's true, things can go ugly rather quick."

"Knew you'd say that." Pollux laughed. "but Chronos says that he's okay and he plans to push Keeler a little bit further."

"That idiot is gonna ruin everything." Lestat moaned tiredly, now massaging her eyes along with her throat. "But alright, let's play along. I hope he knows what he is doing. Anything else?"

Lestat was about to stand up, thinking that Pollux didn't have any more new, when his concerned voice made her stop half-way.

"Actually, yes." the fighter shifted uncomfortably from one feet to the other. "Muffin got jumped."

"What else is new?" Lestat barked in answer. Her throat was starting to hurt more and she was over thirty hours on her feet and dreamed of her bed.

"Well, this time they got her good." Castor cut in, his calm tone soothing any angry retort Lestat could have had for Pollux. "She had escaped, but she has three ribs broken and twisted ankle."

"Brilliant."

"She can no longer operate alone as usual. Chronos said to tell you..."

"To switch? That's quite obvious." Lestat scowled. "Put Muffin in pair with him, I'll take Gasket. And let's hope it's enough."

"Right."

"What is more, we have to speed thing up a little bit. Carmilla had an attack again today and I'm getting low on adrenaline. And morphine, to be honest."

That made both Castor and Pollux frown.

"Again? That's way too fast!"

After that, they chatted for a moment more, discussing and outlining the job for the next day and Lestat agreed to find the rest of the group and convey the infor to them. They parted still talking as they were going out of the engine room, so not one of them noticed a small sigh of relief that came from behind the crates they were sitting on.

After some time, when he was really sure nobody was coming in again, Deimos jumped out of his hiding place.

/

The door hissed open and Helios registered it through a thick veil of his sleep only because he waited for it. His dreams were heavy, didn't bring any relaxation or peace and he was turning and turning around without actually waking up. It made him even more tired than previously, so Selene coming back was something he could use to calm himself. Unconsciously, he started to emerge from his sleep, taking in small proofs of somebody else being in the room, but it soon caused him to frown, displeased. Because nothing he heard was right and normal for Selene.

First, there were fighter's boots on the floor, their heavy rhythm easily distinguishable from the navigator's gear. He steps were wrong, quiet breathing too light and short, even the ladder made a strange sound when the intruder made their way to the top bunk. Still, it took Helios w while to become conscious enough to process all those details. And when he did, focusing his eyes on one leg, hanging from above, he started and sat up.

"Lestat?"

Silence was the only answer he got, before slim, feminine leg disappeared from his view. A pair of heavy boots fell down from the top bunk a second after with thud and Helios frowned, standing up.

"The fuck you doing here, Lestat? Where's Selene?" he asked angrily. Lestat was lying face down on Selene's bunk, without her jacket already and didn't move an inch at his irritable tone. But when he moved to shake her, one of her hands caught his and Helios heard something being mumbled into the pillow.

"What's that?"

"I said: SHUT UP!" she yelled, throwing the blanket at him. "It's your fucking fault I have nowhere to sleep now!"

"Huh?" untangling from material, Helios took a step back to avoid any other missiles sent his way. Lestat looked really vexed and tired, with black circles under her eyes and for some reason, bruised neck.

"Don't 'huh' me! Where do you think your moon princess went?!"

Helios groaned.

"To Carmilla again?"he sat down on his bunk feeling that his head started to hurt right then.

"You bet. They took both matressess. Again."

It was obvious she waited for some answer from Helios, but he just couldn't bring himself to care too much. It was his sister, right? Not very dangerous person, yes? Well, there were some issues between them, but they both wanted to work them out and it couldn't go wrong, could it? So, nothing bad in leaving Selene with Carmilla for couple more hours...?

Helios noticed that he fell asleep sitting only when Lestat threw the pillow down and yelled at him to stop snoring.


	4. Chapter 4

What woke Helios up was a blaring alarm. Again.

Then, a thud and a scream of pain.

"Goddamit!" Lestat must have forgotten that she wasn't sleeping in her own bunk and hit her head right into the ceiling, when the wailing sound of the alarm slapped her awake. Helios would be amused by that if his tired senses wouldn't have taken him already into his shoes and halfway to the door, before Lestat grabbed him by the arm.

"Stop, you idiot!"

"We have to go, it's…" he tried to protest and free his elbow, but the woman punched him in the side. Hard.

Helios saw stars. Sudden hit made his lungs contract from the force of it and then expand fully, to provide him with needed oxygen. Adrenaline started to be pumped through his veins, preparing him to enter the battle, later with the Colterons, now with huffing Lestat, still holding him by arm and observing his face. His exhausted mind suddenly gained a few liters of air to breathe and Helios chocked, coughed and… felt more awake.

"We are grounded!" Lestat called, trying to shout through raging alarm. "The twins, remember?!" she added, when Helios looked at her blankly. She let him go, jumping into her own shoes and grabbing jacket from the top bunk.

That was true, now that Helios thought about it, relaxing slightly. They were grounded, because of the mistake with Selene and Carmilla. What meant that they couldn't get into their ships and actually didn't have anything important to do during the attack. But there was something…

"Then let's go to the Bridge!" he yelled into her ear, when they stormed out to the corridor, joining crowd of people running in every direction.

"What for?! We might be needed in the bay!"

"Just come!"

Helios could see one or two unfamiliar faces of Faraday's fighter among other members of the crew, but right now he strictly needed only Lestat. Grabbing her hand, he dragged her after himself, weaving through the crowd.

/

The Colterons attacked out of nowhere. Their ships weren't picked by the radar, they didn't give off any heat or leave any magnetic trail to follow. Abel assumed malfunction of the system before actually thinking about a sabotage, but right next second all such thoughts vanished from his mind, when the Red and Black teams encountered the enemy. The Kepler had quite strong shields and they should be enough to keep the rest of them safe, before off-shift crew would take off into the space.

If they worked, that is.

On his left, Abel could hear a gasp and violent swearing, when at least half of shields' monitors suddenly greyed out. The Bridge became even more noisy, when the shots, up until then held back by magnetic force, hit them with full power.

"For the love of…! What's going on?!" Someone fell heavily into the chair by his right and Abel saw in the corner of his eye oddly colored hair of Selene, already bent over his own station and hitting the keyboard furiously. He sighed with relief and concentrated on his task, not even bothering to answer that question. It must have been rhetorical anyway.

Something was blocking the shields' software and Abel had to literarily pierce through their own firewall to get them green and working once again. A loud cheer hit the Bridge, when he succeeded, but the joy lasted only a few seconds, before the navigators focused on what was going on outside the ship.

Black team was broken through, Red team was backing off to take advantage of the ship's now working shields. Some of the ships were badly damaged and navigators called the command to receive permission to land in the dock, afraid of the state of their life support. The calls were going over and over, shouting data, yelling in pain or simply praying to their gods to somehow let them live. Cacophony of sounds was deafening and the constant boom of Colterons' shots on the shields wasn't helping.

Commander Hayden was giving orders so fast that he needed three navigators to keep up with him.

"What in the world is that?!" Abel could hear Phobos from his seat across the room, his shrill voice cutting through all the screaming. On reflex he looked at the other, as some did and found him pointing at the main screen, where they all could see huge foreign object appearing from nothing, just in front of the Kepler.

"Brace up, men!" they heard Commander Hayden. "This is the Hive of Colterons! Prepare for more of them coming!"

Abel stiffened in his seat, not wanting to believe in what he was seeing on his screen. The Hive must have opened, releasing a crazy number of new Colteron ships. They looked like an asteroid belt on the radar.

"Look!" navigator from his left called. "The reinforcements!"

Screen, crowded with raging red points of the enemies, was slowly filled with advancing blue dots of fighting squads. Abel could hear Encke in the communication channel, ordering the teams to flank the Colterons and get them in crossfire, but even to an untrained eye it would be obvious that the Alliance had too little force to actually push the aliens back. Abel felt a cold feeling of dread sitting in the pit of his stomach, completely unrelated to his own struggles in keeping the shields up. The situation looked really bad and they couldn't even escape.

"… _right, from right!..."_

"… _disengage and do not pursue, I repeat…"_

"… _while they're distracted!..._

"… _fire at will-!"_

Somewhere higher, on a technical balcony Lestat elbowed Helios, almost pushing him off the railing.

"We don't have ion cannons? I thought every Alliance unit has them!"

"Stations!" Helios yelled back. He couldn't find Selene and began to fidget nervously in place. "Not ships!"

Lestat said something more, but Helios couldn't be bothered, since he finally noticed his navigator running through the door and taking his place by a monitor. Was it a matter of lighting or did Selene look really sick? His face looked a bit greenish, dark bags easily distinguishable under his eyes. But elbowed brutally once again, Helios turned his gaze to outside screens.

They observed with worry as Black and Blue team combined and took the Colteron blast head on, only to scatter at the last possible moment and avoid the fire, but succeeding in luring the first rows of the aliens behind battered shields. The field flickered back on when they retreated, imprisoning some of the Colterons with the Allience ships.

"Great!" Lestat howled with some fighters. Helios looked at her as if she was stunted.

"How is that great? They're here with us now! INSIDE the shields!"

"So we have a chance to kill them, now that they're seperated from the main forces! Wait, wha...?"

Helios watched, as confused as the rest of the crowd, as suddenly a huge blast bloomed near the Hive, with some small ones littering now retreating alien forces. Even though Colterons were winning, in just another second they lost half of their ships and the base, causing the rest to panic and become easy targets for the Allience fleet. With renewed vigour, Black, Red and Blue teams started attacking.

"What just happened?" Helios asked Lestat, but he was talking to himself, as Lestat disappeared from his side in the commotion that rised after the unexpected but successful attack.

People were cheering loudly, when the navigators worked on bringing everything safely online and Helios ran downstairs, wanting to find Selene and hug him with all his might.

/

"I think we have him."

Lestat frowned at Castor, standing in another small machine room somewehere below the bridge, where she had been pulled from the crowd. Several other people of their group were there as well, all looking at the navigator with tablet.

"How?" she just asked. Two navigators to her right engaged in heated whispered argument.

Castor waved his tablet at her.

"Djinn pulled some interesting information from the infranet. Kepler's firewall is nonexistent! No wonder it's so easy to sabotage this damn ship. Now we just have to give it to codehackers and wait for results."

"How suspiciously convenient." Muffin mumbled somwehere in the group. Lestat had to crane her neck to see little redhead, only to see she still had a sling and looked rather battered.

"Of course." Castor smiled, his sharp icy features contracting into strangely wrong expression. "It's suspicious. But it's worth a shot, because Faraday should appear here in four to five days and we simply don't have time."

The group murmured in distress, before one of the fighters, Sinbad spoke:

"Do we have to stick to first schedule? It could be too short."

Castor shrugged.

"Can't be helped. We need Commander just for the finishing touches, in the middle of operation it could be disastrous. Not to mention that Carmilla's health detoriates quicker than we anticipated."

That made the murmurs go full volume.

"Why did we take her on then?" barked one of the fighters. Lestat rised an eyebrow at him. "Isn't she jeopardizing the operation?"

"We need her." Djinn interrupted him, shaking her head. "And Commander decided about it."

"That's right. " Lestat decided to cut in, standing in the middle of the group, beside Castor. "And Commander apparently knows what has to be done. Let's talk about the plan for a moment. Someone knows where is Chronos?" she asked.

"In space." came immediate reply. "He is a part of Black team."

"And Gasket?"

"Same."

"Alright. How is snooping going, Djinn?"

"We're getting somewhere Lestat, but Carmilla is busy deceiving that Selene navigator and Theseus and I can only do as much alone."

"I'll take her to you, when it's possible. Does Lead Navigator suspect you?"

"He may, but we are careful."

"Good. What about Lead Fighter?"

Pollux snorted loudly.

"He focuses on his sanity not snapping when the captain mocks him, so the poor man has it hard. He is a good guy for this job, holds us rather strictly. Not very observant, though."

"Okay, I'll take care of him when the time comes." Lestat nodded in thought. "Just make sure Chronos doesn't cross him."

"Sure thing."

"That's it for now. Go back to your posts and be on standby. Don't draw attention and wait for the signal."

The group dispersed quickly, leaving Lestat and Castor alone.

"You think we'll be on time?" the navigator asked quietly, uncertainty evident in his voice.

Lestat sighed.

"We have to. We just have to."

/

After the battle, even though the ship was safe, the crew experienced very nervous times. Commander Hayden with the Lead Fighter and Navigator made sure to get on everyone's nerves by issuing constant checks and patrols to ensure that Colterons were really gone. Navigators were worked much harder than usual with engine and ship configuration and system test-runs, while fighters were run around controlling away ships and their own battle readiness until they dropped.

Thanks to that, one of the scouts sent on recon mission flied across abonded alien ship on his way home.

Decision to get aboard the derelict was taken surprisingly fast, considering how much Commander Hayden stopped anything that could cause them to actually meet the aliens in the past, such as faster pace of the engines.

The whole crew waited impatiently for results of the sweep that a group of people went to do, getting all excited and a little nervous as what this ship was supposed to be. There was no more subjects for conversation going around, when Lestat and Carmilla marched through a corridor in direction of the Second Navigational Lab.

"Ugh." Lestat pretended to gag, when she heard another theory about suspicious derelict. "don't those people have anything else to think about?"

"Certainly not like us." Carmilla stated calmly. Taller woman looked at her with a frown.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing." Carmilla shrugged, putting her access card to the reader. Inside however, instead of relative silence interrupted only by soft humming of machinery, the two encountered a metaphorical storm.

"I- captain, how dare you-!"

Keeler's voice, high-pitched from anger, caused Carmilla to twitch nervously and Lestat to frown more. Shorter, more fragile frame of the Lead Navigator was trembling in front of a stronger one towering over him and Keeler looked only one step away from banging his fists on Chronos's chest. He was as pale as if he had seen a ghost.

"Lieutenant, I assure you that-"

"Enough!" Keeler shouted hysterically. Either he must have been unaware of audience or he just didn't care, because he slappped Chronos loudly across the face, turned around on his heel and stormed outside, barely stopping to open the door. Carmilla had to jump out of his way not to be removed by force.

"Erm.. sir?" Lestat tried, watching with awe as the man brought hand to his cheek, as if not believing what'd just happened. Keeler's hand was small and feminine-like, but it left a nasty red mark that already started to swell. "Goddamnit, Chronos, the fuck was this?!"

"Haven't seen the Lead like that in a while." Carmilla said slowly, still looking at the door which Keeler disappeared behind. Lestat didn't care for lieutenant's moods, because she shook the captain by his arm to kick him out of a different world he seemed to slip into. Light came back to Chronos's dull eyes and he smiled.

"Hello, ladies. How's the sweep going?"

"I'm going to kill you one day." Lestat promised.

"Everything alright, captain?" Carmilla handed the man her tissue, which he took with grateful grunt when the fabric touched his irritated flesh.

"Splendid, little one." even though half of his face was covered by the frilly thing, it could be easily seen that Chronos was grinning. And that wasn't a nice smile. "I think I've just stumbled over something interesting."

"Pollux will be keeping an eye on you." Lestat threatened, but Chronos just laughed.

"Thanks, but I don't like threesomes."

Before Lestat could do something she would later regret in the brig, two other navigators entering prevented her from doing it.

/

Helios couldn't find himself a place to sit down and think properly.

Since coming back from the derelict after that strange light accident his head started to hurt and the pain accompanied him through later hours, when he tried to lie down and sleep. And after two hours of restless turning from side to side, he decided it would be a great idea to take a walk. Somewhere, no matter where, just to clear his thoughts and calm down his mind enough so it would stop hurting him so much.

He turned around the corner and, of course, he had to run into sombody. Hard.

"Oof!"

"I'm sorry!" he exclaimed, taking in softness and light weight of the other person. "It's my fault, I'm very sorry!"

"No problem." the navigator woman said, massaging her head in slow circles. She was black skinned with short, curly, dark hair and she would be cute if she wasn't so tall for a woman. "Oh. It's Helios, right?"

"Yes, I am? Why?" Helios asked, astonished that he had been recognized even though he had no idea who the navigator was. The woman laughed and Helios liked the sound, low and refined.

"You are Carmilla's brother's fighter, am I right? Muffin described you quite well." she said, kneeling down to gather scattered pads and discs that littered the floor. "I'm Djinn, by the way."

"Nice to meet you."

Helios was confused. He kneeled too, helping the woman, furiously thinking how was he so famous among the Chronos' squad? Okay, they would know Selene, since he was a mirror image for his sister, but him? Not that he minded. Djinn was good-looking and apparently she didn't mind that he had run into her a moment ago.

"And how exactly did 'Muffin' describe me?" he asked, suddenly curious, but that only made Djinn laugh harder.

"'Tall, dark hottie with rooster hair'." Djinn answered immediately and her grin widened when Helios blushed and sputtered. He would have argued with her, good-naturely, that his hair wasn't as bad, but he felt himself being lifted by his collar and momentarily lost his breath.

"The fuck you're doing with my navi?" came in voice clearly indicating that its owner maybe was a nice person, but right now he was extremely pissed off. "You having a death wish?"

Helios managed to weave his fingers through the other man's fists, freeing himself and finally managing to catch a breath.

"Are you an idiot, Sin? We were just talking! He helped me gather my things!" Djinn yelled, stepping between them. She was so tall that she could look her fighter directly into eyes.

"That's not what it looked like." Sinbad grumbled viciously, but his complaints quietened under woman's heavy stare. Helios coughed and she turned to him with worry.

"I'm really sorry for this dimwit." Djinn said, ignoring Sin's outraged 'hey!'. "He is quite protective sometimes and...

"Sinbad! Djinn! Something happened?"

Helios, still confused as to what was exactly going on, turned his gaze away from Djinn's chocolate eyes only to meet Carmilla's, grey and troubled. Right behind her, Selene was walking in their direction, eyeing the other fighter with a frown.

"Nothing, Carmilla. Just a little tiff is all."

"That's good." the girl nodded to the others and watched as they made their way to another turn of the corridor, arguing constantly. "Are you alright, Helios?" she asked miserably.

"Yeah. What a grip this guy has..." Helios said, rasping a little. His throat felt raw and pulsing. He was considering going into the bathroom and pour some cold water on it, before he felt cool fingers touching him and he shuddered. Selene's hands were gentle, when he examined Helios's injury and Helios would get swallowed into this feeling without protest, but he could still hear Carmilla talking.

"Well, he overreacted, that's for sure..."

"Overreacted? Look at his neck! That could be dangerous!" Selene got really angry and Helios couldn't believe how happy it made him.

"Actually, that was his wife Helios was 'flirting' with..."

"Wife?" rasped Helios with amazement.

"Flirting?" Selene exclaimed, immediately getting redder. He tried to hide his face behind his bangs, but Helios could clearly see how cute he was, as his hair was held by a bandage. That caught his attention.

"This?" Selene defined, asked about it. "It's for my ears, Helios. The bleeding stopped, but the MO told me to keep it on, just in case. That's why Carmilla had to come get me from the Med Bay."

"I could have done that." Helios said, a little put off. He was happy that the twins were finally on good terms, but why didn't Selene want him to take care of his navigator?

"You needed your rest, Helios." Selene said, his voice suddenly soft and caring. He stroked Helios's cheek with his finger, looking him in the eye sweetly. "I didn't want to bother you."

"You'd never bother me." Helios also started to talk in a hushed voice, not able to break their locked gazes. Carmilla had to cough rather loudly to pull them back into the real world.

"So. I can leave Selene with you?" she asked, smiling. While Selene's smiles were soft and elegant, Carmilla smiled as if someone had just switched on a lightbulb. Helios couldn't say no to that and soon after Carmilla gave her blessing, they went to their bunk, hugged together, as Helios didn't want Selene to fall.

Carmilla smiled blindingly for a moment more, before her expression turned much more serious and tired. She frowned deeply, loosing all her sunshine and young look. She directed her steps to the nearest corridor, just to step into first room on the right side.

"Was it okay?" Djinn asked, getting up from a crate she was sitting on. Sinbad was leaning on the wall near her. "I didn't know if that was what you wanted, so I tried to provoke a talk with him."

"That was okay, thank you. I think it was enough, so you can write the rest."

Djinn got out her tablet and hesitated.

"What should I..?"

"'Phase I complete. Prepare for Phase II."


	5. Chapter 5

The bridge was full of nervous chatter that was breaking short periods of complete, focused silence.

Djinn turned her tired eyes away from her console and sighed.

"You get something from it, Carmilla?" she asked, frustrated. Since the beginning of their shift, both of them fought with the script retrieved from the derelict, but the code seemed to wiggle in their hands, refusing to be simplified.

One quick look to her right told her that Carmilla appeared not only aggravated, which could be deducted from her hitting the keyboard as if it killed her dog, but also looked really sick. Her complexion was ashen and she had dark circles under her eyes. "Hey, you okay?"

Carmilla made a face at her monitor. "Yeah, I'm fine. Haven't slept well tonight and all."

"Maybe you want out? We can talk to Keeler..." Djinn began, but Carmilla shook her head. Her oddly colored bangs covered her face.

"I don't think so. It seemes that he had a fight with Chronos and is really pissed. See?" near them, Keeler was grounding a navigator for walking too loudly, when everybody else was concentrating. Djinn rised her eyebrows at that, but ducked her head to the monitor just as the Lead's sight went to her. "And I feel so stupid. It shouldn't be so hard to decipher all of this!"

"Oh, c'mon. Theseus and Seiryu looked like death when they left their shift and they usually get things after the first time."

"Doesn't change the fact that I look at it for five hours straight and it made more sense in the beginning than it does now!"

"Aren't you a little hard on yourself?"

"I don't have time for this!" Carmilla threw her hands into the air in frustration, when her monitor was littered with errors yet again. "what a meaningless piece of-!"

"Chatting, ladies?"

Both women twitched, when Keeler's sweet voice sounded in their ears from very, very close.

"No, sir!" Djinn intervened quickly. "just exchanging tips for this code. Sir."

"It wasn't what it sounded like, navigator." Keeler was still being overly nice, but his words started to drip poison. "Don't you think our situation is a little too serious for simple chat?"

"No, sir!" Djinn somehow panicked and got tangled into grammar.

"Oh, you don't?"

Carmilla made a breathe out sounding as if an elephant sneezed.

"We don't think the situation is not serious, Keeler sir. We were working."

Before the Lead Navigator could react to such obvious gesture of rudeness, another navigator made his way towards them, politely, but decisively taking Keeler attention and anger on himself.

"We are all a little on edge today, sir. Everybody is working double shifts and it makes people unsure, so they tire out quicker. Even you, sir, need to rest sometime."

It was evident that Keeler wasn't in the mood to let anyone tell him what he should have done or not, but right then his commlink beeped, signaling message of great importance. One look at the screen made the Lead Navi frown harder, but it appeared that now he had different trouble to think about than his tired crew.

"Go back to work everyone. I expect your assignment to be done by twenty hundred hours, Abel." he said sternly, uncharacteristic scowl making his hansome face distort in wrong ways, when he looked at the eager blond. "as for you two..."

"I'm going to help them, I've just translated my part." Abel cut in quickly, seeing that neither Djinn nor Carmilla knew what to say. "we'll be done in a flash, sir."

"You better be."

After he stomped away and the whole bridge took a breather, Djinn turned to Abel.

"Hey, thanks a lot. I didn't think that we did so bad to make him like this."

"Oh, you didn't. "Abel smiled broadly. "I don't know what happened, but he is like this since morning. Don't mind it." he bent over Djinn's console and looked at her screen. "Did you try Magellan's method?"

"I did, but it didn't respond."

"Hm..." Abel hit the keys for a moment, thinking. Then, with more vigour, he wrote a line in code and accepted it. All lights previously in alarming red, now flashed friendly green.

Abel took their double thanks with a nod of his fair head and a little laugh. He waved them goodbye, already leaving to help someone else and Djinn sighed with relief that some of her work had been taken from her shoulders, but she snapped to attention again, seeing that Carmilla looked after Abel with a scowl not much different from Keeler's.

Asked what was wrong, Carmilla tensed.

"Weird, wasn't it? That he got it so easily..."

/

Castor's commlink beeped.

"Finally!" he stated with satifaction. He was pulling the file from the communicator to his tablet, when a disheveled blue head popped out from under a duvet on the lower bed.

"Whatcha yellin' about?" Seiryu asked through a wide yawn.

"I finally retrieved the data we needed. We still need to decode it though, but that's a start."

"Show me?" Seiryu sat on the bed, scratching his shaggy head. It wasn't long since he left the bridge and he could certainly use some hours of uninterrupted sleep, but maybe when they come back to the base after the mission...

"I don't think it's any language you know." Castor pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

"Show me nonetheless. Wanna see." after a moment of confused silence, Seiryu handed back the tablet he impatiently had laid his hands on. "Yup, total gibberish. What we gonna do with that?"

"Give to Carmilla."

Seiryu made a face of complete disbelief.

"Really? Look, I know it's not reliable coming from me, but I'm pretty good at what I do. You think she is better?"

"Believe me, she is. At least Faraday said so and I believe our Comander."

"Then she must be a god or something." Seiryu still looked unconvinced, but resigned from an argument and covered his head with a duvet again.

/

A good night's sleep did wonders to Helios and his concentration, so he couldn't help himself from humming quietly, while marching to the docking bay. He had made plans with Selene to check their ship and then go together to find some unoccupied flying sims. Thanks to the last days' events, Helios didn't have much time to spend with his navigator, since Keeler put everybody on double shifts to speed up translating and decoding the data retrieved from the derelict. Selene was coming to their room nearly transparent from exhaustion, usually in tow with Helios himself or another navigator coming off work. Last night, as Helios had been occupied with a task Encke gave him all of a sudden, they had met just in front of their door, with Selene, being supported on an arm of Faraday's fighter, a tall guy with navy blue hair and a characteristic scar on the bridge of his nose. Helios knew him from training – he was code-named "Suzaku" and was exceptionally good with his aim, but nonetheless, Helios had nearly ripped Selene from him in a sudden act of baseless jealousy.

Today however, as it was Selene's well deserved day off, they decided to spend together some time after Helios finished his PTs and what could have been better than a flying simulation? Not to mention that it would mean being close together in a closed capsule with no prying eyes, but with relatively healthy and rested Selene and as such, Helios could think of some usages of this situation...

Deep in his sweet daydream, he was about to pass rarely used corridor leading to cargo rooms, when a string of colors, a movement caught his attention. He stopped abruptly in his tracks. Was it a person he noticed? What would they be doing there? Aware that Kepler didn't carry any cargo that would require checking on it, Helios tensed. He didn't know what to do, but something told him it might be important. So, before he could second guess his choice, quickly and quietly, he followed his hunch.

The person that sneaked into the bay must have felt rather confident and using a communicator of some sort as Helios could hear only one voice.

"... why not? You said it wasn't a problem." at first he couldn't place it, the person was talking quietly. "I know, but that's not we agreed on. Listen, it's not like I have to have it now, but it would be a damn help if you hurried."

Moving very, very slowly, Helios managed to silently get near the door and peek around the corner. Baffled, he nearly betrayed his presence by gasping at the sight in front of his eyes. Luckily for him, the one inside the room laughed and quietened his blunder.

"You don't talk much, huh?" Muffin asked, cocking her head to the side. "Alright, you know what? Let's say you hurry up and steal it tonight? Yes, if nothing happens. And then my boss will get you off the hook and, who knows?, maybe even reward? Yeah, yeah, I'm joking, chill. So, as we agreed, huh? You don't even know how much it makes my work easier. Thanks, Deimos."

When Muffin emerged from the isolated corridor, Helios had already fled from his observation spot. Unusual situation he had seen made him frown in uncomfortable premonition that there was something strange going on and he was apparently missing it entirely. He didn't talk much to Deimos, but knew quite well the guy didn't talk to just anybody or made a deal with them, for that matter. Why he did with Muffin? Who was 'the boss' she was talking about? Faraday? Or someone else altogether?

Deciding with a sigh that it was surely not for his brainpower to ponder about, Helios made a note to himself to tell Selene everything, the more so that he was just approaching the docking bay.

However, one step inside made him immediately loose his good mood, as he could see people crowding around and shouting, most probably with hostility. Elbowing his way through a group of yelling technicians and fighters, Helios almost toppled over with relief finding Selene safe and sound, even if a little confused.

"What happened?!" Helios yelled at the top of his voice, trying to get through the noise. He protectively shielded Selene with his bigger frame from any stray punches that could come that way.

"There was... an accident." Selene said, as if not sure himself. He clutched to his fighter, so he wouldn't be swayed by crowding people. "Cain said something was wrong with his ship!"

"That's all?!"

"No!"

Helios didn't pay much attention to what exactly people were yelling about, but in the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of someone fighting in the middle of gathered fighters. Cain was standing there, his usual scowl in place, but he was watching the fight with intensity uncharacteristic even for him. Helios startled, when Selene hugged him closer and his attention switched back.

"I checked his and Abel's ship!" Selene had to raise his voice as well. "She's grounded! Her systems were all off the charts!"

"... what. Jesus!"

"We disconnected the auxilary drive and told others to do the same! It's dangerous!"

"I bet it is." Helios looked again over the heads of the crowd, this time with much interest following violent tremors in the fight. He could distinguish two people defending while all others were attacking, waiting for their turn in tight circle. Who was that..?

"I caught two fighters from Commander Faraday's squad." Selene continued. "they checked their ships and said they were okay, so other people got interested and said some things..." Selene looked strangely confused, as if some unlikely ideas came to his head and he considered them nonetheless. "They started to wonder who could do such a thing and someone said that it was all their fault and... and..."

Someone fell in the crowd after being punched soundly and in the space made by a missing person, Helios noticed Pollux, spitting away blood from a busted lip and standing back to back with Suzaku, presently raising his bloodied fists to defend from a sloppily thrown hit.

/

Lestat spat her cereal back into her bowl, when a newly arrived mail opened on her tablet. Ignoring disgusted looks the fighters near her sent her way, she shoved the monitor in Gasket's direction. Gasket calmly put down her sandwich and chewed what she already had in mouth before taking it.

"Oh."

"Don't fucking 'oh' me, Gasket! Move!"

Lestat jumped to her feet, in one hand taking the pad and with the other gripping her partner's shoulder, she marched to the exit, still cursing quietly.

The mail she got from Castor was short: _"_ _Phase II finished. Commencing preparations for Phase III."_

/

Carmilla was just coming out of one of the rooms, when she was suddenly tackled with much force and dragged into nearby niche. Before any thought about screaming or struggling could cross her mind, a hand covering her mouth lifted and Selene hushed her in an urgent voice.

"Hey, it's me."

Carmilla observed as he checked both sides for something and only then turned to her when he was sure nobody was coming. His features were tight with tension and Carmilla, taken aback, took his face in hands, trying to find or guess what was wrong.

"Listen." Selene gently, but confidently removed her fingers from his chin, frowning. "I discovered something and I think I can overhaul that, but... do you work on the intranet pad? Is it connected?"

"No, my friend said Kepler's security isn't so good, so we isolated some of our workpads to ensure..."

"Good! Give me one."

Carmilla fumbled with her utility belt, handing her brother the device he wanted, worried by his too bright and feverish eyes. "Alright, but what are you..."

"Is 'sabotage' telling you something?" Selene was irritated, that much was apparent. He was also afraid he was already too late in his actions, which was driving him crazy, but when the question was asked, he had to take a second look at his sister. Carmilla, instead of becoming wide-eyed example of snow-white innocence, tightened her lips in a thin line and her face hardened into something impossible to read. It was Selene's turn to become worried.

"Actually, it is." Carmilla said, gripping her brother's elbow with strength he didn't suspect she had in her. Before he could react more decisevely however, Carmilla code-opened the door she previously left and stormed inside. The room was occupied; a navigator was sitting by the table, engrossed in his notes, but he raised his fair head, when the twins tumbled in together.

"Oh?" Castor turned to them, silent question evident in the arch of his eyebrow. "Did something happen? You just left not so long a-"

"Selene has something to say." Carmilla interrupted him, then turned to her brother. Selene took in a shuddering breath, when both navigators looked at him with similar, stony eyes. "what was that you were saying about sabotage, brother?"


	6. Chapter 6

The ship was oddly quiet.

It took Helios a while to deduce the source of this strange silence, since the engines were a white noise from the moment he had boarded the ship. Their humming was like a normal background for everyday routine and without it, everything seemed a little ominous. Even normally crowded corridors were deserted and Helios wondered where had everybody gone, as he met nobody on his way to the second navigational lab.

Wondering what had caused this sudden predicament, Helios's head snapped up, when he heard quick tapping of shoes nearby.

"Who's there?" he said, a little against himself. There was nothing to fear on the ship and yet, the athmosphere made him uneasy.

"Oh."

Helios gasped quietly with surprise, when Chronos emerged from behind the corner. He expected anyone, but not the captain of the Faradayers. The man was in casual clothes, surely on his day off, but his expression was contorted and he was frowning.

"It's you, Sunny." he said distractedly, looking carefully at walls as if looking for something. But before Helios could even react with obvious exasperation, the man gripped his arm hard.

"Is there an emergency alarm switch?"

"Huh?"

"A switch. For alarm. Is there anything like it here?"

It was Helios' turn to frown, since what Chronos said was simply strange. Of course he knew there was an alarm switch, but it couldn't be used before all other means of activating the system had been used. As he told the other that, Chronos frowned even deeper. "I see. But where is-"

" _Greetings Kepler. I am the representative of the Anglers."_

Helios looked around in confusion. The voice coming through speakers was familiar, but the words held no sense.

" _We have apropriated this vessel and are currently purging all unnecessary elements. Life support is currently suspended..."_

"What?!"

"Shit!"

Chronos gripped Helios' arm tighter, pulling him after himself. They started to run together, quickly accelerating, especially after the calm, indifferent voice was interrupted by Keeler's hysteric shout about the bridge being compromised and something about the screens, which was incomprehensible.

" _Please, do not resist."_

/

"Yes! That's it!"

Sitting on the lower bunk with still ruffled sheets, Selene fist-pumped enthusiastically, when his screen didn't grey out, but beeped appreciatively, accepting the software.

He looked terrible, all pale and with deep, dark circles around his bright eyes. Hunched, focused exclusively on signs appearing before him, Selene spent better part of the last three hours in this position, not caring for cramps or back pains. The pad he got from his sister was beginning to run out of power, when everything suddenly made sense.

He had to admit that he had had quite a scare when both of them entered the room and faced Castor. Selene knew him as an excellent programmer, but didn't interract with him all that much, so seeing his stony expressionless face from up close sent shivers down his spine. Even more so that Carmilla had identical expression on her usually smiling face. But as they shared with him the data, the projects that they had had access to, Selene understood that even if they were a little suspicious, they were not the people responsible for the recent problems, so he shouldn't focus on that then.

"You sure?" Carmilla asked, looking even worse than Selene. Her complexion was ashen and she sweat a lot, over and over again wiping down her forehead. "Let me see?"

As she took over the pad, Selene pinched bridge of his nose, feeling that a huge migraine was gathering behind his eyes. But if he was right, if only he was right, everything was going to be alright and everybody would be safe and nothing would happen to Helios...

" _Greetings Kepler. I am the representative-"_

Three navigators listened in stunned silence to the announcement, along with Keeler's shouted call for help. However, when the other two just sat and did nothing, Selene sprang from his place and ran to the door.

"We have to help them!"

"Are you sure this will cancel out the brainwashing?" Castor asked calmly, pushing the glasses up with his index finger, pointing at the pad with his other hand. Selene turned abruptly on his heel, disbelieving.

"Yes! Yes, I do! But what does it have to do with anything? They need help!"

"Indeed." Castor got up from his chair, taking the pad from Carmilla and quickly transferring the data to his own device, attached to his belt. Then, he passed Selene on his way to the door, not looking back.

"Wait! I-"

Selene wanted to follow, but to his surprise, he was violently pulled back by his shirt, turned around and pushed onto the bed again. As he regained his balance and tried to prop himself up, he looked directly into a barrel of a handgun.

"I don't think so, brother."

Even though Carmilla looked very sick, being pale and trembling from seemingly high fever, her grip on the trigger was correct and her hands didn't shake. The gun was proffesionally pointed in direction of his heart.

"Jacqui, what-?"

Carmilla half-smiled and Selene felt that his heart stopped with fear.

/

Helios ducked, when Chronos' kick sent struggling tech to the opposite wall.

"Don't hurt them!"

"Who cares! Shit, how many more of the are there?"

"Not many! Ethos, hang on! Punch him in the throat, now!"

"Keeler, come here! That's it, sweetie, just stay behind us and everything'll be alright!"

Comanding the few conscious people left in the Bridge, Helios and Chronos somehow managed to take over the area, however not without damage. The brainwashed techs seemed to have twice the strength they normally had and were terribly persistent unless they hurt their heads. As much as everyone understood they had to make path for the navigators no matter what, the crew were too many and too persistent for them to make any considerable progress.

The commander stormed inside with Castor by his side, his face paled with contained fury, when he pushed away the techs that were advancing on him.

"What in blazes is going on here?! I want answers, men!"

"I think I can explain, sir!" Ethos called from behind Helios' back, where he found temporary shelter form more attacks. Already typing on a nearby keaybord, at the same time avoiding looking directly into the screen, he started to describe the situation to the Main Navigator, when suddenly, the lights flickered and went back on.

"Whoa, nice one, Ethos!" Helios called, pacifying one of the last affected ones. By his side, Chronos wiped his face with his elbow, leaving bloody trace on his forehead.

"It wasn't me!"

"Who, then?" commander Hayden asked, already calm and composed. He looked as disheveled as all of them did, but somehow more dignified.

"Must've been Djinn and Seiryuu, then."

A voice that came from the entrance was familiarly rasping and when everybody turned to see the intruder, they all sighed in relief, seeing Cain. However, they didn't have time to actually ask him something, because right behind him came Pollux, dragging struggling Abel after himself and Gasket, holding a gun directed at the navigator's head.

"What the-?"

"Sir, we've caught the perpetrator behind all of this!" Pollux shouted and gasped, when Abel's foot kicked him in the shin. Even tied up, the navigator expressed uncanny will about trying to escape, completely ignoring Gasket. Maybe he was correctly assuming that she wasn't allowed to kill him, so scaring him with this possibility was a failure? Helios didn't know, but he saw that the woman made a really fast decision, because only a split of second passed since Pollux weakened his grip, when Gasket pounced on Abel and hit his head with the grip of the gun.

The navigator went limp and slid bonelessly to the floor.

"Hey!" Cain exclaimed, jumping forward to hold the other's body. "Whatcha doin'?!"

Gasket shrugged pocketing her gun, as she hauled Pollux to his feet.

"Can someone tell me what's going on?" Commander Hayden asked, his tone icy cold. This situation was bordering on grotesque, since all personnel in the room was occupied with something and up until now ignored their commander as they desperately attempted to make things right. But as the uproar calmed temporarily down, Hayden was having none of it anymore.

"It seems we had a saboteur on the ship." Keeler was still engrossed in typing, so fast that his voice was hardly recognizable in all that patting. "And according to what the fighters say, it appears to have been Abel."

Keeler, Ethos and Castor were positioned across the room, opposite to the entrance, working on two consoles each. In everpresent keybord sounds, enormous amount of data was being processed and Helios didn't even want to think how fast their brains were working, in fear of shortcircuiting his own. Instead, he came closer to Cain, who was delicately cradling Abel's unmoving body.

"How is he?"

When Cain looked upwards, Helios nearly chocked on his own breath. Never had he seen such a hopeless expression of concentrated conviction.

"Not good." Cain's voice was more raspy than usual. As he winced, Helios could see big, ugly bruises on his neck, as if someone had been trying really hard to strangle the other fighter to his last breath. Seemed like Abel's apprehension was quite a challenge for the three of them. "But he is alive."

"Was it really his work?" Helios asked, immediately regretting it. But he couldn't catch the words that had flown from his mouth and he watched, upset, as Cain stiffened and looked at him as if he wanted to snap, but in the end decided not to. It hurt, seeing so much devotion and his inability to deny the accusation, no matter how much he wanted to.

An unfamiliar sound came from one of the consoles. Keeler, who was the one behind it, gasped in amazement.

"Sir!" he called. "There is an official ship asking for access to our docking station!"

"Alliance?"

"Yes, sir!"

Commander seemed to ponder about it for a moment, taking in the sight before him: few navigators, furiously working on bringing the systems back online, some tired, battered fighters and majority of the crew, that was lying unconsciously on the floor or where the kicks and punches of Helios and Chronos put them. As his frown deepened, he turned to still waiting Keeler.

"Access denied. We cannot risk anyone disrupting our procedures. We have to deal with what we-"

The door opened with a soft hiss, when a group of people marched in. Before anyone could do as much as blink, several figheters, in combat suits and armed with heavy shotguns positioned themselves around the room, pointing the weapons at the Commander. Because Hayden stood in the middle of the room and behind him were only the navigators' consoles, the only targets beside him could be Ethos, Keeler or Castor. Poor Ethos stopped working, his mouth opened widely in surprise, his eyes round and innocent. Keeler wore a similar frown as Hayden, while Castor calmly finished typing in the command for computers, before looking at the attacking company, pushing his glasses up his nose, as per his habit.

Helios flinched, uneasy, because despite mirror helmets, he could tell all fighters holding weapons were not from the Kepler. Faraday's, then.

The door hissed again; one more person appeared and Helios couldn't help but gasp in time with Cain's swearing, when Lestat looked at them scornfully.

"It is not wise to refuse the police, sir." she said, very calmly and very lifelessly. "Because they might think you have something to hide."

"What is the meaning of this, fighter?" Commander Hayden straightened, his serious expression once again contorted with anger. He wanted to move forward to Lestat, but the closest soldiers brought their weapon to their faces, as if in warning, lowering them very slowly and deliberately. "Is this a riot?"

The woman still looked at him without expression.

"Not really." she said and added, as Hayden took a step back, to the consoles. "And I'd be grateful if you remained in one place, sir. Castor?"

Commander knew better than to react carelessly to any sudden noise he heard, so when there was an ' _oof_ ' sound behind him, he didn't respond. However, from faces of the crew in front of him he could deduce that Castor had just pushed Ethos behind his console and tackled Keeler further away, behind another one. Which meant far and out of his reach.

"Thank you." Lestat stated.

Hayden wanted to say something, but when he moved too violently, one of the soldiers brought his gun to his helmet, this time not going back into offensive, but passive stance.

"We kind of take over the ship right now." Lestat sighed, as if it had been more trouble that it had been worth. "not for long. Just enough for the investigators to board."

"Investigators?" in the commotion, Cain had backed into a corner, shielding Abel's unconscious body. However, the surprise must have been too much if it overcome his possessivenes and worry and made him speak.

"That's right." Lestat didn't even look at him, but at her beckoning one of the soldiers moved from his place and positioned in front of Cain and Abel, protecting them. "All in all, we had a sabotage case here, did we not?"

Helios watched, as Cain froze and paled rapidly. In some strange thought process, he looked around himself, searching, but Chronos was nowhere to be found. At the same time, from behind consoles came violent cursing, as Keeler wrestled with Castor, while Helios could see that Ethos must have hit his head and was lying now curled up not so far away.

The door opened once more.

Up until now, Helios had felt that nothing made sense, but somehow dealt with it, as there always had been something to do, someone to protect and fight. Right now, everything got even more confusing, as Carmilla entered, protectively hugging stack of working pads and discs. Lestat turned to her, as she marched forward, hunched.

"Do you have everything?"

"Yes m'am." Carmilla said weakly and even Helios, despite standing quite far away, could tell that she didn't feel well. "We pulled this out from his personal computer. Everything is in here.."

It was a split of second. As everyone was looking at Carmilla, her words focusing attention on her and her hands, the soldiers' reaction was a moment too late. Helios could just hear a sharp sound, could see the girl's body, unnaturally bent with a bloody rose on her breast, before someone knocked into him, violently pushed away and suddenly all sounds went away and the darkness swallowed him whole.

/

"... which, as presented, resulted in a serious increase..."

Helios listened to the briefing, at the same time trying very hard not to fall asleep. The topic was the most interesting, concerning the events of the past few days on the Kepler, but the speaker used so many long and ambiguous words, that his attention started to swim away, no matter how hard he tried to focus and understand.

Commander Maxwell, the leader of the Third National Navigational Academy and an assigned partner to Commander Faraday, came on the police ship together with another armed squad. Let in by Encke and his fighters, Commander Maxwell took over the Kepler in the name of the Alliance, making the whole ship undergo emergency procedures, such as strict quarantine and body check on every possible occasion.

She was a short, very thin woman, with tightly clasped lips and a bun out of grey hair. She looked like nothing, but she had everybody running around as she wanted in no time and Helios snickered everytime he saw her and her tall aide, scared senseless and on a verge of crying. It was no wonder how this scary woman had become a commander, but Helios wondered how in the hell did they get paired up, she and Faraday.

As his thoughts shifted completely away from Comander Maxwell's lecture, Helios threw a quick glance to the side, where Commander Faraday sat. She had changed from her fighter clothes and now displayed all needed insignia of her status, so different from what she had been showing around the past few days. As she sat, listetning, her lips were curled in little smile, mocking and self-confident, as if she was proud of herself. And probably she was, Helios thought, in the end she had caught the culprit she had come here for.

Looking around told him that all of the important people were there. The Lead pair, Keeler and Encke, squad leaders and medical representatives all together. They listened in silence, some with unbelieving expression on their faces, some frowning and others just plainly surprised, as Commander Maxwell explained the situation they were put under not so long ago. How long has it been? One day or two? Helios knew, but it was hard remembering with this headache...

There had been a short command and apparently Maxwell must have finished, because everybody stood up from their chairs and started to leave the room, by the time Helios fought his throbbing headache down. Adjusting bandage on his battered head, Helios jumped to his feet, not wanting to behave rudely in front of the commanding officers, but a sharp voice halted him in place.

"Helios! Stay."

Unconsciously standing at attention, Helios turned on his heel, only to be confronted with Commander Faraday, still with that disturbing smile on her face.

"Spare me a few minutes of your precious time, Helios." Faraday said and for a moment she sounded just as provocative and aggressive as Lestat, whom she had been know as for the last week or so. But the impression was gone in an instant, replaced by someone more calm, more charismatic and more powerful. Still looking him in the eyes, Faraday said. "I hope you can take care of the rest, Rowena?"

"Certainly." Commander Maxwell answered, organizing the workpads on the table. "However, I do think you should not let all these brutes run around unoccupied, Alma." She sniffed disapprovingly.

Faraday laughed. The sound of it, foreign and disturbing, snapped Helios out of stupor he had gone into while staring into her hypnotizing eyes.

"I'll take care of it. Now, would you please leave us?"

Commander Maxwell straightened.

"Naturally."

"Thank you, Rowena."

As she left, Helios experienced a sudden drop in tension he had been feeling for a while. Which was curious, since he thought that Faraday was more of a dangerous opponent than unfamiliar navigator, even if a commander.

"How is your head?"

Faraday left him alone in the middle of the room and sat behind her desk, leaning back in the cushioned chair.

"It's okay." Helios stuttered. He was at a complete loss as to why she was talking to him all alone, looking as if she had just decided she needed a break.

"Good. Now, tell me. How much did you understand from Rowena's lecture?"

 _Rowena?_ , Helios' brain tripped over what that could mean, but it quickly started over, even more terrified of not keeping up. "Ugh... not so much, m'am?"

To his utter astonishement, Faraday laughed again. She looked entirely different when compared to her alter ego, Lestat and that differences were still confusing Helios. He somehow got used to snappy female fighter as a rarity, so a female commander caused him some troubles to comprehend.

"Figures. She has a knack for complicating things."she sighed. "But you know that Hayden was arrested?"

"Yes, m'am."

"Do you know why?"

"Because of treason?"

Helios was beginning to feel uncomfortable, standing still and so stiffly. Experimentally, he tried to move his arm, when the joint cracked loudly.

"You can sit, you know?" Faraday quirked an eyebrow at him, so beet red with emberassement, Helios took a seat by the conference table they used for the briefing earlier. "So, treason. Meaning?"

"I don't know, m'am."

Faraday closed her eyes for a moment. Then, she straightened and supported her elbows on the desk, facing Helios with her full attention.

"The man known as commander Hayden was indeed a commander, no doubts about it. However, when some time ago the Central Command had run a statistics check on all the data they had on achievements, to their surprise it turned out that commander Hayden's ship was always meeting Colterons much more often than any other squad delegated into deep space with possibility of the contact. Suspecting something fishy, they ordered my squad to investigate and, if possible, uncover the one responsible for alleged sabotage."

Helios blinked in confusion. He understood that Faraday was important rather unconsciously, so hearing about her ties to the Central Command should have felt normal. It didn't.

"At the same time, CC dispatched a reinforcements team for the Kepler, which had been deployed to go into Colteron territory. They had been switched out and my team took their place. As "the reinforcement team for the Kepler" came a squad from the Military Investigation Bureau or rather Faraday's Suicide Squad, as people call us."

Faraday smirked, seeing that Helios stiffened. As she approprietly assumed, he must have heard about that nickname and wondered.

"I have to say, getting inside was deceivingly easy. We expected at least a little bit of resistance, but none followed our arrival. Aside from small accidents, of course."

Unconsciously, she was massaging her throat, healthy now, but memory of the bruises must have been too fresh. Helios thought about Thanatos and his beaten up face, as well as Charon, who ended up in medical with a lot of complicated fractures, when he attacked red-headed Muffin.

"My code-busters easily slid through the ship's firewall which proved to be nonexistent. We extracted data that pointed us in the right direction about some alien ship, security system of which could have been the cause of the problem... when the same situation happened again! I think Castor nearly flipped, when he compared the logs from before and while we witnessed your expedition to the derelict, Helios."

"But... what exactly-"

"Do you remember the sudden flash? We ascertained that it must have been some kind of light-based brainwashing. However, everybody who went on the ship came with their medical check-up alright, so it was quite a fix." Faraday frowned, remembering the situation. "Not to mention that somebody started to sabotage our work."

"Sabotage? Again?"

"Oh no. The saboteur of the ship was Abel alone, as he had been affected on the derelict. However, it had been obvious for us that someone had been aware of the real purpose we had had and had tried to actually make the crew suspect us and collectively get rid of us."

It was Helios' turn to blink. Sure as hell he didn't remember anything like that.

"How about the harrasement complaints?" Faraday asked gently, correctly reading his expression. "For quite some time we also suspected Keeler to be involved in that incidents, but in the end he was acquitted thanks to Chronos' investigation. But when someone sabotaged all away ships, saving ours, we knew that we had to hurry."

"I remember that." Helios said, slowly, thinking about it. In his memories, he still could see Pollux and Suzaku, protecting themselves from angry mob. "But your ships were also seperated from ours and people started to wonder and all."

"They had to be. We had equipment much different from yours or the standard one, Helios."

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah." Faraday grinned. "There were a lot of changes made, when comparing to a normal starfighter, but the point is, some of our ships had ion shells equipped. That was what you saw when we fought Colterons."

Helios gasped.

"You mean-?"

"Chronos and Gasket teamed up and managed to blow up some on the Hive's power stations and that must have damaged it enough for the aliens to retreat. I didn't want to use them and well, we actually had a ban on using them, but Chronos made the decision and if I have to say, there were not many other option available at that time. Especially when certain someone disabled our shields."

"Hayden again?"

"Oh yes."

"But, why did he?"

"I didn't say that yet, did I? Well, when Hayden had been a navigator beginner, he had experienced something like Abel did. His squad had encountered a derelict ship and he had been affected by the brainwashing, be it light or sound based. The algorithm had been slightly different, that's why he was undiscovered until now, but the motive had been the same: to destroy as many ships as you can."

Helios winced.

"That's sick."

"No. Just sad." Faraday shook her head. "If someone had noticed it earlier, we wouldn't have had so much trouble to begin with. But Hayden remained undetected and he could calmly execute programmed algorithms."

"Until now? How many ships did he...?"

"Many, Helios. All too many."

"And he just let himself be apprehended?"

Helios didn't see anything funny in his question, born out of shocked incredulity, but Faraday laughed out loud.

"Of course not! His miscalculation was that there were many of us and it was unavoidable for him to loose sight of some of us one way or another. This and that we hurried. He thought he had more time, but we managed to gather the proofs before Rowena came. That was such a fortunate circumstance."

Faraday was sitting by her chair, her face supported on her entwined hands. As much as Helios relaxed after commander Maxwell had left the room, he was well aware that this one was testing him. How and what for, he didn't know and above all, he was tired of all those mysteries going on over his beaten head.

"Why are you telling me all of this, m'am?" he asked, after a moment of silence. Rising an eyebrow at him, Faraday straightened up in her chair. Somehow, she seemed disappointed.

"Well, I assumed you would be interested in it, is all. Being indirectly involved, you sure did help us some..."

"Me?"

"You did." the commander stood up and started slowly pacing in front of the conference table. As much as Helios found her gaze unsettling, now that she wasn't looking him in the eye anymore made him even more nervous. "You took care of your navigator and, by extension, mine, too. I'm grateful, so as a thank you I thought you'd like to know what was going on. My mistake. You are dismissed."

Being faced with such abrupt send-off, Helios frowned.

"So it's just... an acknowledgement?" he asked, standing up from his place. Unnamed emotions boiled in his chest, impossible to identify simply as 'rage', 'confusion', 'irritation' or 'curiousity'. With a strange urge to get to the bottom of it, he consciously ignored received order and decided to push Faraday further in her explanations. "Not a try to make me forget about something by turning away my attention to the arrest?"

Faraday, who had been watching the opoosite wall in thought, now turned to him. Her face was lit up with satisfied smile.

"So you _do_ have a working brain behind all of that terrible hair." she said, smirking. "Well done, fighter."

With Helios watching her with eyes narrowed in suspicion, she kept talking.

"You are right and you're not. Exchange of information or, well, explanation of those was indeed an acknowledgement. I'd be happy if you treated it as such. However, at the same time I did want to not discuss a certain thing. Maybe you can guess?"

Faraday was goading him, Helios was painfully aware of that and it was the only reason why he made a try to actually think through what she wanted from him. Should the situation be any different, he would be out of here long time ago.

"Is it about Selene? And this twins' bussiness?" he asked, gruffly. Even though he made an effort to be calm in the presence of his superior, his temper took the better of him and Helios couldn't take anymore Faraday's irreverent attitude.

"Right again." Helios gritted his teeth, as she seemed mockingly impressed once more. "This 'twins' bussiness' as you call it, involves your navigator, who seems to become more important to you than an average fellow member of the crew-"

"Is this a threat?"

"And one of my navigators, a code-hacker named Carmilla. Yes, it is about their 'twins' bussiness', Helios."

"If you do anything to Selene...!"

"Why would I?" Faraday interrupted, her mockingness suddenly gone, leaving strict voice and hard lines on her face. "He was useful and I don't destroy anything that possesses some value. No, what you should be afraid is how he is going to deal with his problems now."

"What problems?" Helios barked, gripping the backrest of the chair in front of him. "What did you do?"

"You have just left the med bay, have you not?" the commander asked, suddenly changing the topic, what caused Helios to frown even futher. "have you met your navigator yet? Because I think he should still be in the med bay of the police ship."

Helios paled rapidly.

"What happened! Why is he injured!?" he was ready to turn on his heel and storm outside to find Selene, but he was caught in place. Faraday was holding his arm in tight grip, suddenly being in front of him instead of some meters away.

"He isn't. Don't panic." she said. Seeing that Helios was still agitated, but he didn't show any sign of running away, she continued. "Selene accompanies Carmilla. She is the one who got wounded during the apprehension."

"But you said you surrounded Hayden and arrested him! How is that even possible to get injured in a situation like that?" Helios shouted, disbelieving. He wanted to add something more, but stuttered and fell silent, focused on what his memory was trying to present him from the corner of his thoughts. "unless... he had a gun? Hidden somewhere?" well, he did hear a gunshot before someone knocked him unconscious. Could that be...

"Bingo. Carmilla had a datapad with her with all information proving that Hayden is behind of this. A moment earlier Castor eliminated any possibility for Hayden to take hostage, so I guess he snapped. He shot Carmilla and shortly after he was shot by Gasket. Now he is contained in a special cell, deep in the ships lower levels. It's not a pretty sight. "

"How is she?"

Faraday stared at him strangely, before answering.

"Not good. She is dying."


End file.
